1. No category

June 2010
Policy Study 382
How California’s Public Pension
System Broke (and How to Fix It)
by Adam B. Summers
Reason Foundation
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Reason Foundation
How California’s Public Pension
System Broke (and How to Fix It)
By Adam B. Summers
Executive Summary
Governments at all levels are struggling to balance their budgets amid falling revenues and rising
costs, particularly of government employee pensions. The state of the economy or the stock market
is often blamed for poor public pension system health. In reality, pension fund underperformance
merely unmasks the volatile—and ultimately unsustainable—nature of the defined-benefit system,
particularly at current benefit rates, which are significantly more generous than benefit levels
received in the private sector. The defined-benefit structure of the vast majority of government
worker retirement plans forces governments (that is, taxpayers) to pay more during recessions to
make up for shortfalls in pension fund investments. Not only is the defined-benefit pension system
unsustainable, it is unfair to taxpayers in the private sector, who are forced to pay more to
recession-proof government workers’ pensions even as they are struggling to save for their own
retiree health care costs and seeing their own retirement benefits reduced during rough economic
times.
Things are markedly different in the private sector. Private sector workers’ pay and benefits are
determined primarily by economic realities, rather than by special interest influence. Thus, it is no
coincidence that private sector businesses began switching to 401(k)-style defined-contribution
retirement plans decades ago, and have by now almost entirely abandoned the defined-benefit plan
for being too expensive and too unpredictable. Many of the few businesses that have retained
defined-benefit plans, largely those in industries characterized by greater labor union strength, have
been forced to dump their pension obligations on the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation
(PBGC), the quasi-governmental agency created in 1974 to insure private sector pensions. During
the last decade alone the PBGC was forced to absorb $1.3 billion in pension claims for National
Steel, $1.9 billion for LTV Steel, $3.9 billion for Bethlehem Steel, $3 billion for US Airways, and
a whopping $6.6 billion for United Airlines.1 Now the auto industry is facing serious pension
problems. Last year, the PBGC assumed responsibility for at least a half-dozen auto supplier
pensions covering 100,000 workers and retirees, adding more than $7 billion to the agency’s
deficit.2 The Big 3 Detroit automakers themselves are also in trouble, with Chrysler facing a $3.6
billion pension deficit, Ford looking at a $12 billion deficit, and General Motors confronting an
$18 billion shortfall.3 There is no such “insurer of last resort” like the PBGC for public sector
pension plans, but since vested benefits are guaranteed by the California Constitution, taxpayers
are the ones who serve this role and are ultimately on the hook for unfunded pension liabilities.
Famous investor Warren Buffett summed up the state of public pension systems in a sobering
discussion from the 2007 Shareholder Letter for his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. company:
Whatever pension-cost surprises are in store for shareholders down the road, these jolts will be
surpassed many times over by those experienced by taxpayers. Public pension promises are
huge and, in many cases, funding is woefully inadequate. Because the fuse on this time bomb is
long, politicians flinch from inflicting tax pain, given that problems will only become apparent
long after these officials have departed. Promises involving very early retirement—sometimes
to those in their low 40s—and generous cost-of-living adjustments are easy for these officials
to make. In a world where people are living longer and inflation is certain, those promises will
be anything but easy to keep.4
While government pension systems across the nation have strained to cope with escalating pension
obligations, California is in worse shape than most because of a large increase in pension benefits
made a decade ago, raising benefits as much as 50 percent for some state employees and cementing
the state’s position as one of the most generous states in the nation in terms of pension and retiree
health care benefits.
A recent paper by University of Chicago business professor Robert Novy-Marx and Northwestern
University finance professor Joshua D. Rauh calculated California’s unfunded liability at about
$475 billion.5 Similarly, an April 2010 Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research study puts
the state’s liabilities at around the half-trillion-dollar mark, estimating them at approximately $535
billion.6 That translates to roughly $36,000 for each California household.7 These newer estimates
are much higher than prior reported estimates of about $63 billion in unfunded pension liabilities.8
It is often argued that governments must pay greater benefits to their employees because they
cannot pay salaries as high as those in the private sector and they need to offer greater benefits and
job security to effectively compete with the private sector for quality workers. While perhaps the
argument could be made a generation or two ago, it clearly does not hold true today. Now
government employees typically make more, on average, in both wages and benefits than their
private sector counterparts.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employer Costs for Employee Compensation report
for December 2009, state and local government employees earned total compensation of $39.60 an
hour, compared to $27.42 an hour for private industry workers—a difference of over 44 percent.
This includes 35 percent higher wages and nearly 69 percent greater benefits.9 Data from the U.S.
Census Bureau similarly show that in 2007 the average annual salary of a California state
government employee was $53,958, nearly 32 percent greater than the average private sector
worker ($40,991).
Pension Benefit Increases, Benefit Creep and the Growing State Workforce
The adoption of SB 400 in 1999 ushered in an era of dramatic pension increases, including the “3
percent at 50” benefit for the California Highway Patrol, whereby a public employee with 30 years
of work experience may retire with 90 percent (3 percent for each year of work) of his or her final
salary as young as 50 years old, “3 percent at 55” benefit for peace officers and firefighters, and “2
percent at 55” benefit for other state workers. For police, firefighters and other public safety
workers, this represented an increase in benefits of between 20 percent and 50 percent.
California Standard Pension Benefit Formulas Before and After SB 400
Employee Category
Miscellaneous/Industrial
Safety
Peace Officer/Firefighter
Highway Patrol
Before SB 400
2% at 60
2% at 55
2.5% at 55
2% at 50
After SB 400
(Effective January 1, 2000)
2% at 55
2.5% at 55
3% at 55
3% at 50
Source: California Legislative Analyst’s Office, “State Employee Compensation: The Recently Approved
Package,” December 6, 1999, http://www.lao.ca.gov/1999/120699_employee_comp.html.
Moreover, the benefit increases were retroactive, meaning that the aforementioned pension
increases of up to 50 percent were, as former Sacramento Bee columnist Daniel Weintraub
observed, “not only for future employees but for workers whose retirement contributions had been
based for decades on the expectation of a lower benefit.”10 These added benefits now cost the state
hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The state will be paying for those benefit increases for
decades to come. As a result of these benefit levels, there are 9,111 state and local government
retirees in California, such as police officers, firefighters and prison guards, who receive pensions
of at least $100,000 a year (through CalPERS), and an additional 3,065 retired teachers and school
administrators who receive pensions over $100,000 a year (through CalSTRS).11
But the government need not change pension benefit rates to increase benefits. For decades,
“benefit creep” has allowed more government employees to move up into higher benefit plans.
This is particularly true for “public safety” employees in California. As a Sacramento Bee article
relates,
Prison cooks, plumbers, groundskeepers, teachers, dentists, business managers, and
“audiovisual specialists”—all are among the 70,000 state workers considered police or
firefighters, eligible to retire with better benefits than other state workers.
In fact, any worker in a California prison regularly in contact with inmates is considered a
police officer, rewarded with a richer public pension for helping safeguard society.
The same goes for workers in state mental hospitals—from psychiatrists to podiatrists—who
supervise patients.12
In the 1960s, roughly one in 20 state employees received public safety pensions. Now it is one in
three workers.13
Another problem is the sheer number of workers that the state employs (at great cost). Since 1998,
the state workforce has grown by over 31 percent, and today the state employs more than 356,000
workers, including the state university systems.14 Incredibly, the state has added over 13,000
employees since the onset of the economic recession in 2008 and continued hiring even during the
worst of the recession.15
Not only are California government workers getting higher pay than most state workers, but the
health care benefits are excessive as well. The state covers approximately 85 percent of health care
premiums for active state employees. The benefits are even better for retirees, covering 100 percent
of health care costs for retirees and 90 percent of costs for their families. This benefit can cost the
state close to $1,200 a month per retiree, according to CalPERS.16
The One-Year Final Salary Rule, Pension-Spiking and Double-Dipping
Additionally, California state workers play by different rules than other states. While California
uses only an employee’s final year salary for the purpose of determining pension benefits, all other
states use the average of an employee’s final three or five years of salary (or highest three- or fiveyear period) in order to avoid situations where employees retire soon after receiving their final
raise. California once used a three-year average as well, but a provision inserted to SB 2465 in
1990 changed state retirement rules to calculate pension benefits based on an employee’s highest
salary in a single year. The law was expected to cost an additional $63 million per year. In reality,
it has proven to be 50 percent more costly, totaling more than $100 million annually.17
The state and some of its government employee unions have agreed to go back to the three-year
average in recent years, albeit through the collective bargaining process rather than the stricter
legislative process, though pensions for firefighters, highway patrol officers and peace officers are
still based on the one-year final salary rule.
In addition to using the one-year final salary rule to increase retirement benefits, employees may
intentionally inflate their final compensation so as to increase their pension benefits, a process
known as “pension spiking,” by having accrued vacation time, unused sick leave, excessive
overtime, shift differentials, education incentives, cashed in auto allowances, uniform allowances,
etc., included in their final salaries. The passage of SB 53 in 1993 made it more difficult to spike
CalPERS pensions by manipulating final-year pay, although “loopholes in state law make pension
spiking easy and legal.”18 State workers can increase their pensions by purchasing up to five years
of service, called “air time,” which they can count toward their retirement, without paying the full
actuarial costs of those benefits.
Workers who have already retired may also “double-dip” to enhance their retirement compensation
by returning to work for the state, collecting both a salary and a pension. Some states prohibit the
practice or force employees to forfeit their retirement checks when they go back on the state
payroll, but it is legal in California so long as employees do not work more than 960 hours in a
year, about half-time. According to the Los Angeles Times, more than 5,600 state employees are
currently “double-dipping” in California, a figure 57 percent higher than a decade ago.19 “The
notion is we have retirement systems so once people stop working they are provided for,” said
Alicia H. Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. “It seems just
not acceptable to taxpayers that people are earning a salary and a retirement check.”20 And former
California Assemblyman Keith Richman says that those collecting both a state paycheck and
retirement payments are “ripping off the taxpayers.”21
California’s liberal workers’ compensation and disability pension rules as to what constitutes a
“work-related” injury also invite abuse. State law presumes, for example, that police officers and
firefighters suffering from illnesses such as cancer and heart disease were injured on the job, thus
automatically qualifying them for disability pensions.22 This has also become a problem for local
governments that have adopted this state government policy. Paul Derse, a deputy executive
administrator from Ventura County, illustrated the waste that such loose disability retirement rules
invite: “We had a four-pack-a-day smoker who was presumed to have cancer from his job.”23
Unrealistic Actuarial Assumptions
Contributions to defined-benefit plans are based upon actuarial assumptions designed to ensure that
the plan is sufficiently funded to cover its benefit payouts. These assumptions include what the
average annual pension fund return will be, how much salaries and inflation will increase, how
soon employees will retire, how long retirees will live, what disability rates will be, and so on.
Complicating matters is the fact that these assumptions must be projected out decades into the
future, rendering them little more than educated guesswork. If the actuarial assumptions prove to
be wrong and costs are higher than expected, taxpayers are liable for the difference.
One of the major assumptions that has proven to be overly optimistic is the rate at which the
pension systems discount their future liabilities. Public pension systems use the average annual rate
of return that they expect their pension fund investments to achieve as the discount rate. This tends
to encourage riskier investment strategies, which may offer higher returns, because this allows
pension systems to use a higher discount rate and thus makes liability estimates look lower to the
public.
The danger, of course, is that the risk does not pay off and investments underperform, resulting in
larger than expected liabilities (as we have now witnessed firsthand). The CalPERS Public
Employees’ Retirement Fund, for example, has significantly underperformed its assumed 7.75
percent average rate of return24 for the one-year, three-year, five-year, and 10-year periods.25
CalSTRS has an even more aggressive 8.00 percent assumed rate of return.26 Investor
extraordinaire Warren Buffet has said that such assumptions are much too high, and has set a more
reasonable assumption of between 6 percent and 6.9 percent for the pension plan in his own
company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., over the past decade.27 Some financial advisors have suggested
that an even lower rate, such as 5 percent, would be more reasonable.28
How Do We Fix It?
Most of the public pension “reform” proposals that have been put forth in California and elsewhere
do not go far enough. The entire defined-benefit system is broken, particularly given the cozy
relationships between lawmakers and labor union officials, and only a complete overhaul can
restore fiscal responsibility to the state’s retirement system. Tinkering with the existing definedbenefit retirement system by implementing a lower tier of benefits or increasing retirement ages
does not work because it is too easy to simply increase benefits at a later date. Moreover,
preserving the existing defined-benefit pension system would maintain the moral hazard problem
that arises from the incentive of policymakers and labor unions to push for benefit increases in the
short term when the actual costs of those enhancements will largely not materialize until long after
they are out of power.
Switching to a 401(k)-style defined-contribution plan for new employees would afford California
lower costs while offering a number of other benefits such as:

Increasing the stability, transparency and predictability of the annual contribution
payments required of the government (i.e., taxpayers)

Ensuring full funding of the system

Providing employees greater plan portability and greater freedom to invest their retirement
money as they see fit

Removing political influence from investment decision-making.
While this would have some short-term consequences, requiring the state to effectively deal with
significant exiting liabilities, it would represent a long-term shift that would ultimately put
California on much healthier financial footing.
In devising its new retirement plans, the state should adopt salary and benefit rates that are
comparable to those earned in the private sector. Retiree health benefits are much less generous in
the private sector, if they are offered at all, so California should reduce its retiree health care
benefits, just as private firms have been forced to reduce their health care costs for active workers,
and/or require employees to make suitable contributions for their retiree health costs. Several
states, including Connecticut, Kentucky and New Hampshire, are now requiring employees to
make contributions toward their retiree health care benefits in addition to contributions to their
pension plans.
Those who do not work for the government should not be forced to pay for ever-richer benefits for
public employees while they are seeing their own retirement funds erode during difficult economic
times. In addition, requiring voter approval of future government employee benefit increases—as
several local governments, including San Francisco, San Diego, and Orange County, have done—
would serve as a final check against unwise, overly generous pension enhancements and excessive
labor union influence.
The municipal bankruptcy of the city of Vallejo, due primarily to the city’s inability to meet rising
pension costs, served as a wake-up call to governments across the state and the nation. It may
already be too late for some others to avoid the same fate, but those that are able, including the
state of California, must realize that only significant reform can solve such a significant problem.
To that end, they should follow the lead of the private sector and switch to a defined-contribution
retirement system with benefits comparable to those received in the private sector for all future
government employees, as well as following these recommendations.
Recommendations
1. Perform an evaluation of wages and benefits offered in the private sector and adjust state
employee compensation to bring it in line with this standard. Repeat such an evaluation every five
years.
2. Close the defined-benefit pension plans for state employees and enroll all new employees in
defined-contribution plans for pensions and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) such as
retiree health care and dental benefits.
3. Adopt more conservative investment strategies and more conservative discount rate assumptions
for current employees’ defined-benefit plans.
4. Begin pre-funding OPEB liabilities for employees already in the current system, with the
ultimate goal to achieve full funding.
5. Adopt an amendment to the state constitution requiring all future government employee benefit
increases to be ratified by the voters.
6. Adopt an amendment to the state constitution prohibiting retroactive benefit increases.
7. Eliminate “air-time” purchases to reduce pension spiking and discourage early retirement.
8. Require employees who have previously retired to forfeit their retirement checks while they are
on the state’s payroll to avoid double-dipping.
R e a s o n
F o u n d a t i o n
Table of Contents
Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 How We Got Here..................................................................................................... 4 A. Pension Benefit Increases ................................................................................................... 7 B. Benefit Creep ................................................................................................................... 10 C. State Employee Growth.................................................................................................... 11 D. The Rising Costs of Retiree Health Care Benefits and Other Post-Employment Benefits .... 12 E. Other Contributing Factors ............................................................................................... 13 1. Unrealistic Actuarial Assumptions ............................................................................................. 13 2. Demographics.......................................................................................................................... 15 3. The One-Year Final Salary Rule ................................................................................................ 16 4. Pension Spiking........................................................................................................................ 17 5. Poor Fiscal Planning and “Contribution Holidays” .................................................................... 18 Pension Reform Proposals ........................................................................................ 19 A Way Out: Switch to Defined-Contribution Retirement Plans ................................. 21 A. The Rise of Defined-Contribution Plans ............................................................................ 21 B. Public Sector vs. Private Sector Pay and Benefits............................................................... 23 C. Advantages of Defined-Contribution Plans ....................................................................... 24 1. Stability and Predictability of Contribution Levels ..................................................................... 24 2. Choice for Workers .................................................................................................................. 24 3. Portability ................................................................................................................................ 24 4. Younger Worker Appeal ........................................................................................................... 25 5. Rational and Individual Investment Choices.............................................................................. 25 6. Accountability and Transparency.............................................................................................. 26 D. Government Defined-Contribution Plans ......................................................................... 26 Voter Approval Requirements................................................................................... 30 Conclusions.............................................................................................................. 31 Recommendations ................................................................................................... 33 About the Author ..................................................................................................... 34 Endnotes .................................................................................................................. 35 HOW CALIFORNIA’S PUBLIC PENSION SYSTEM BROKE
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Part 1
Introduction
For a long time now, state and local policymakers and labor unions have looked the other way as
growing public pension obligations have increasingly become a fiscal burden, but now the problem
can no longer be ignored. Taxpayer advocates and government watchdog groups have been
warning for years that state and local governments must address their mounting pension
obligations, and now their warnings are proving prescient.
Governments at all levels are struggling to balance their budgets amid rising costs and falling
revenues. Unfortunately, it is during times such as this when the nature of the defined-benefit
structure of the vast majority of government worker retirement plans requires the government to
kick in even more contributions to make up for shortfalls in pension fund investments.
The state of the economy or the stock market is often blamed for poor public pension system
health. In reality, pension fund underperformance merely unmasks the volatile—and ultimately
unsustainable—nature of the defined-benefit system, particularly at current benefit rates, which are
significantly more generous than benefit levels received in the private sector. Even the chief
actuary of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System was compelled to admit last year
that the current system is unsustainable.29
While government pension systems across the nation have strained to cope with escalating pension
obligations, California is in worse shape than most because of a large increase in pension benefits
made a decade ago, raising benefits as much as 50 percent for some state employees and cementing
the state’s position as one of the most generous states in the nation in terms of pension benefits.
Equally excessive retiree health care benefits exacerbate the state’s notoriously chronic budget
deficit problems.
The steadily increasing public pension obligations have been described as a “pension tsunami”
preparing to swamp government budgets.30 In 2005, Reason Foundation described the situation as a
“gathering storm.”31 It has now started raining. Unfortunately, California, like many other
governments across the country, did not save for a rainy day. In fact, it did quite the opposite:
continuing a spending binge without addressing the rapidly increasing costs of state workers’
retirement benefits.
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Things are markedly different in the private sector. Private sector workers’ pay and benefits are
determined primarily by economic realities, rather than by special interest influence. Thus, it is no
coincidence that private sector businesses began switching to 401(k)-style defined-contribution
retirement plans decades ago, and have by now almost entirely abandoned the defined-benefit plan
for being too expensive and too unpredictable.
Those businesses in the private sector that have retained defined-benefit plans have suffered in
recent years as a result of increasing wages and pension obligations. These are mostly businesses in
“legacy” industries characterized by greater labor union strength, and thus higher costs and less
flexibility in their wage and benefits levels. First, it was the steel industry, then the airlines, and,
more recently, the domestic auto industry. During the last decade, the Pension Benefit Guarantee
Corporation (PBGC), the quasi-governmental agency created in 1974 to insure private sector
pensions, was forced to absorb $1.3 billion in pension claims for National Steel, $1.9 billion for
LTV Steel, $3.9 billion for Bethlehem Steel, $3 billion for US Airways, and a whopping $6.6
billion for United Airlines.32 Now the auto industry is facing serious pension problems. Last year,
the PBGC assumed responsibility for at least a half-dozen auto supplier pensions covering 100,000
workers and retirees, adding more than $7 billion to the agency’s deficit.33 The Big 3 Detroit
automakers themselves are also in trouble, with Chrysler facing a $3.6 billion pension deficit, Ford
looking at a $12 billion deficit, and General Motors confronting an $18 billion shortfall.34
There is no such “insurer of last resort” like the PBGC for public sector pension plans, but since
vested benefits are guaranteed by the California Constitution, taxpayers are the ones who serve this
role and are ultimately on the hook for unfunded pension liabilities.
It is particularly egregious and unfair to expect taxpayers, the majority of whom are private sector
workers struggling to set aside enough money for their own retirement and family’s health
insurance premiums, to also bear the ever rising costs of retirement and benefits for public sector
employees.
California has been spending beyond its means for many years. If it is to right-size its government,
it must address the pay and benefits of its over 356,000 employees.35 Efforts to nibble around the
edges by slightly altering benefit formulas will prove unsuccessful because they preserve the
existing unworkable defined-benefit structure and make it too easy for policymakers to repeat the
same mistakes and simply increase benefits again in the future. Moreover, preserving the existing
defined-benefit pension system would maintain the moral hazard problem that arises from the
incentive of policymakers and labor unions to push for benefit increases in the short term when the
actual costs of those enhancements will largely not materialize until long after they are out of
power.
Famous investor Warren Buffett summed up the state of public pension systems in a sobering
discussion from the 2007 Shareholder Letter for his Berkshire Hathaway Inc. company:
Whatever pension-cost surprises are in store for shareholders down the road, these jolts will be
surpassed many times over by those experienced by taxpayers. Public pension promises are
HOW CALIFORNIA’S PUBLIC PENSION SYSTEM BROKE
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huge and, in many cases, funding is woefully inadequate. Because the fuse on this time bomb is
long, politicians flinch from inflicting tax pain, given that problems will only become apparent
long after these officials have departed. Promises involving very early retirement—sometimes
to those in their low 40s—and generous cost-of-living adjustments are easy for these officials
to make. In a world where people are living longer and inflation is certain, those promises will
be anything but easy to keep.36
The municipal bankruptcy of the city of Vallejo, due primarily to the city’s inability to meet rising
pension costs, served as a wake-up call to governments across the state and the nation. It may
already be too late for some others to avoid the same fate, but those that are able, including the
state of California, must realize that only significant reform can solve such a significant problem.
To that end, they should follow the lead of the private sector and switch to a defined-contribution
retirement system with benefits comparable to those received in the private sector for all future
government employees.
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Part 2
How We Got Here
State and local public pension systems across the country are struggling with mounting obligations
as a result of overly generous retirement benefits, unrealistic actuarial assumptions and the
downturn in pension fund investment performance during the past couple of years as a result of the
recession. A recent Pew Center on the States report estimates that states have a combined pension
and retiree health care deficit of $1 trillion over the next 30 years. Even this daunting figure is
understated, as it was based on a survey of only about 85 percent of state retirement systems and
relied upon midyear 2008 data, missing out on additional pension investment losses incurred
during the second half of 2008 and early part of 2009.37
Several other estimates are even higher. A March 2010 Barron’s cover story pegged the likely
pension deficit of the states at about $2 trillion.38 A Free Enterprise Nation study from earlier this
year puts the combined state and local government unfunded liability at $3.5 trillion.39 And a recent
paper by University of Chicago business professor Robert Novy-Marx and Northwestern
University finance professor Joshua D. Rauh estimates state pension liabilities alone at between
$3.2 trillion and $5.2 trillion.40
While public pension troubles are widespread, California has got more than its fair share of
pension problems. In a separate paper, professors Novy-Marks and Rauh calculated California’s
unfunded liability at about $475 billion.41 Similarly, an April 2010 Stanford Institute for Economic
Policy Research study puts the state’s liabilities at around the half-trillion-dollar mark, estimating
them at approximately $535 billion.42 That translates to roughly $36,000 for each California
household.43 These newer estimates are much higher than prior reported estimates of about $63
billion in unfunded pension liabilities.44 Moreover, the Stanford report estimated that the state
would have had to contribute $200 billion—nearly two and a half times the size of its entire
general fund budget—just to have an 80 percent chance of covering at least 80 percent of its
pension liabilities in 16 years.45 What is worse, this analysis applied to the funds’ values as of June
2008—before they lost roughly $100 billion combined during the ensuing fiscal year.
In response to the Stanford study, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a press release
acknowledging the severity of the public pension problem and its consequences for other state
programs and priorities:
HOW CALIFORNIA’S PUBLIC PENSION SYSTEM BROKE
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This study reinforces the immediate need to address our staggering pension debt. According to
the study, California taxpayers are on the hook for over a half trillion dollars. That’s nearly six
times the size of our entire state budget. The consequences are clear: increasingly large
portions of state funding for programs Californians hold dear such as schools, parks and
health care will be diverted to pay for this debt. That is bad enough, but without reform,
pension debt will only grow.46
California’s pension system is broken and unsustainable. Public pension costs will continue to eat
up a large, and growing, portion of state and local budgets. At the state and local levels,
governments are increasingly spending more on public employees’ retirement costs and less on
actual government services like providing police protection, educating our children, or offering
health and human services. Schwarzenegger administration Special Advisor on Jobs and Economic
Growth David Crane notes that “This year alone, $3 billion was diverted to (state) pension costs
from other programs.”47 Already, approximately 4.1 million Californians—about 11 percent of the
population—are members of one or more of 134 state and local government retirement systems,
including around 1 million who currently receive benefit payments.48 In a February 2010 National
Review column, Kent Osband argued:
While wrapped as public-spiritedness, such benefits are actually assaults on future
generations. When education bills get padded with extra retirement benefits for teachers, they
guarantee that a larger share of future education budgets will be siphoned off to people who no
longer teach. That can’t possibly help the next generation to learn. Nor can it help the next
generation of teachers, who will have to settle for lower pay and worse benefits to keep their
states afloat.49
The situation is not going to significantly improve anytime soon. Governor Schwarzenegger’s
administration has estimated that the official estimates of the state’s pension deficit could swell
from the aforementioned $63 billion figure to $300 billion if pension investments continue to earn
less than the anticipated return rates,50 and, according to the aforementioned studies, the real costs
are likely much higher and will burden the state for decades to come.
Pension funds for the state’s two main retirement systems, the California Public Employees’
Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS),51
have posted staggering losses as the economy dove into recession and investments faltered. Both
funds lost roughly one-quarter of their portfolio values, as CalPERS reported a loss of $56.2 billion
for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2009, and CalSTRS posted a drop of $43.4 billion, for a
combined loss of $100 billion in one year.52 CalSTRS reported that it could only cover 77 percent
of its future obligations53 (and if pension fund investment losses had not been spread out over a
three-year period the system’s liabilities would be only 58 percent funded).54 This puts it below the
80 percent funding ratio threshold financial experts typically hold up as the mark of a sound
government pension system.55 This means that the state, as well numerous local governments that
have their retirement systems administered by CalPERS, will have to make significantly higher
contributions in the near future to offset the pension funds’ losses.
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These funding troubles led Moody’s Investors Services to downgrade the long-term credit ratings
of both CalPERS and CalSTRS by three notches in December 2009. According to Martin Duffy,
the company’s vice president and senior credit officer, the action “reflects our expectation that the
cumulative back-to-back market value declines in the investment portfolios of both CalPERS and
CalSTRS for the fiscal years ended June 2008 and 2009 will exacerbate long-term projected
actuarial funding shortfalls, recent market gains notwithstanding.”56
Pension costs to the state have skyrocketed over the last decade. In fact, total California pension
expenditures have quintupled since FY 1998-99, from about $1 billion to $5 billion (see Figure 1),
and they are expected to triple again to $15 billion within the next decade.57 Including state and
local governments, California taxpayers are already spending $17 billion to $18 billion a year for
public employee pensions and retiree health care, and costs are increasing at a rate of several
billion dollars a year.58
Despite a policy of spreading out pension fund investment losses over many years to prevent large,
sudden increases in the contributions that must be paid into the system (see “Unrealistic Actuarial
Assumptions” below), CalPERS is still requiring the state and local governments that have their
pension plans administered by CalPERS to increase their contribution rates by 6 percent to 10
percent.59 Unlike CalPERS, CalSTRS does not have the authority to set its own contribution rates,
but it plans to petition lawmakers to increase its contribution rates as well sometime next year.60
Figure 1: California State Retirement Costs, FY 1998-99 to FY 2009-10
Source: California Legislative Analyst’s Office, 2009-10 Budget Analysis Series, “General Government,” Figure 6:
State Costs for Retirement Programs, p. GG-31.
http://www.lao.ca.gov/analysis_2009/general_govt/gengov_anl09.pdf.
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It is an unfortunate characteristic of defined-benefit plans that economic downturns necessitate
greater government contributions to the pension system at the very time governments themselves
are struggling to cope with falling revenues and can least afford to do so. While the investment
losses are often blamed for poor retirement system health, they are merely the symptom, not the
disease. Significant swings in the stock market and other investments—particularly to the
downside, as we are now experiencing—simply reveal the inherent volatility and unpredictability
of the required contributions for defined-benefit plans. The real culprit is the extravagance of
government employees’ pension benefits.
A. Pension Benefit Increases
The simple answer to how California got into its present pension mess is that it promised more
benefits than it could afford. As we shall see, the defined-benefit structure of the state’s pension
system facilitates this by allowing costs to be hidden or postponed for many years. The final straw,
however, was the passage of significant pension benefits increases in 1999. As a result of these
benefit levels, there are 9,111 state and local government retirees in California, such as police
officers, firefighters and prison guards, who receive pensions of at least $100,000 a year (through
CalPERS), and an additional 3,065 retired teachers and school administrators who receive pensions
over $100,000 a year (through CalSTRS).61
The adoption of SB 400 in 1999 ushered in an era of dramatic pension increases, including the “3
percent at 50” benefit for the California Highway Patrol, whereby a public employee with 30 years
of work experience may retire with 90 percent (3 percent for each year of work) of his or her final
salary as young as 50 years old, “3 percent at 55” benefit for peace officers and firefighters, and “2
percent at 55” benefit for other state workers (see the text box below for a more detailed
explanation of how benefits are calculated for these formulas). For police, firefighters and other
public safety workers, this represented an increase in benefits of between 20 percent and 50 percent
(see Table 1).
Table 1: California Standard Pension Benefit Formulas Before and After SB 400
Employee Category
Miscellaneous/Industrial
Safety
Peace Officer/Firefighter
Highway Patrol
Before SB 400
2% at 60
2% at 55
2.5% at 55
2% at 50
After SB 400 (Effective January 1, 2000)
2% at 55
2.5% at 55
3% at 55
3% at 50
Source: California Legislative Analyst’s Office, “State Employee Compensation: The Recently Approved
Package,” December 6, 1999, http://www.lao.ca.gov/1999/120699_employee_comp.html.
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How Defined-Benefit and Defined-Contribution Plans W ork
A traditional, or “defined-benefit,” retirement plan spells out the pension amount an
employee will draw once he or she retires based on a formula consisting of an agreed-upon
multiplier (a fixed percentage rate) and the employee’s final salary and the number of years
worked. It also sets a minimum retirement age. The amount of benefits is determined by
multiplying the fixed percentage by the number of years worked (usually up to a maximum of 30
years) by the employee’s final salary. Plans are often referred to by their benefit formulas. For
example, a “3 percent at 50” plan would allow an employee who had worked for 30 years to
retire at age 50 with 90 percent (3 percent times 30) of his or her final salary.
Pension benefits are paid from a combination of employer contributions, employee
contributions and investment returns from a pension fund, which is managed by a government
pension board. Under a defined-benefit plan, benefit levels are guaranteed by the employer (in
this case, the government), and any shortfalls that result after employee and pension fund
contributions are made must be covered by the government (i.e., the taxpayers).
By contrast, a defined-contribution plan, such as a 401(k), delineates how much must be
contributed to the employee’s retirement plan, rather than what the final benefits will be. Under
a defined-contribution plan, the employer contributes an agreed upon amount equal to a certain
percentage of the employee’s salary to the employee’s retirement account. This account is
controlled by the employee instead of the government, so the employee has greater freedom
over his or her retirement portfolio, but also bears the risk of the account’s investment
performance. Depending on the plan, the employee may or may not be required to make
contributions to the account as well, and sometimes the employer will make additional
contributions to match employee contributions up to a certain amount.
Moreover, the benefit increases were retroactive, meaning that the aforementioned pension
increases of up to 50 percent were, as former Sacramento Bee columnist Daniel Weintraub
observed, “not only for future employees but for workers whose retirement contributions had been
based for decades on the expectation of a lower benefit.”62 These added benefits now cost the state
hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The state will be paying for those benefit increases for
decades to come.
The bill also eliminated California’s two-tier system for non-safety/industrial employees.
California had adopted a second, less generous pension benefits formula for new state workers in
1991 in an effort to control pension costs. Under SB 400, the “1.25% at 65” Second Tier was
essentially abandoned and Second Tier employees were moved to the more generous First Tier
plan.
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The measure was advanced on the flawed assumption that the remarkable pension fund investment
gains earned during the late 1990s would continue indefinitely, and that these earnings would
cover the vast majority of the additional costs of the benefit increases, so the state and taxpayers
would not be on the hook. It was estimated, based on CalPERS’s assessment of its “superior return
on system assets,” that by 2009 and 2010 the annual cost of the benefit increases would be
approximately $650 million. The actual costs to the state are $3.1 billion for this fiscal year, and
$3.5 billion next year.63 SB 400 passed by a 70-7 margin in the Assembly, and unanimously (39-0)
in the Senate.
SB 400 additionally allowed local governments to match the state’s pension increases for public
safety employees. Numerous local governments then followed suit in order to compete with the
state and each other to attract workers. Now they are facing the same pension funding dilemmas as
the state, as pension contributions eat up an increasingly large share of their budgets. The city of
Vallejo, California was forced into municipal bankruptcy due primarily to its pension obligations,
and other local governments across the state may be headed for the same fate.
CalPERS bears as much blame as state legislators for the trend to increase benefits. In addition to
strongly lobbying for legislation such as SB 400, CalPERS encouraged local governments that
participate in CalPERS plans to adopt higher benefits. In exchange for local government approval
of pension increases, CalPERS offered to reduce municipalities’ required contributions to the
system.64 Thus, governments were induced to increase benefits while decreasing the amounts they
were contributing to their systems, making funding gaps even larger in the longer term.
A study conducted in 2004 by California’s non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office determined
that California’s retirement benefits are much more generous than those of comparable states. The
study found, for example, that an employee who worked 21 years for the state and retired at age 65
with a final salary of $65,000 would earn a pension of $46,500 in California. The same employee
would realize benefits of $40,775 in Texas, $29,606 in Oregon, $28,913 in Illinois, and $28,410 in
Florida (see Table 2).65
Table 2: California Retirement Benefits Compared to Selected Other States
State
California
Florida
Illinois
Oregon
Texas
Benefits at Age 55
$25,200
$11,914
**
$15,242
**
Employee Retiring in 2004*
Benefits at Age 60 Benefits at Age 62
$36,098
$40,958
$20,424
$24,439
$24,250
$26,115
$24,831
$26,741
$34,199
$36,829
Benefits at Age 65
$46,500
$28,410
$28,913
$29,606
$40,775
Employee
Contribution
5%
–
4%
6%
6%
* Assumes employee started working for the state at age 34 and has earned $60,000 in salary in the last year
before retirement.
** Not eligible for retirement at this age.
Source: California Legislative Analyst’s Office, Analysis of the 2004-05 Budget Bill, “General Government,”
February 18, 2004, p. F-19, http://www.lao.ca.gov/analysis_2004/general_govt/gengov_anl04.pdf.
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Soon after the “dot-com” stock market bubble burst in 2000, just a year after SB 400 was passed, it
became clear to many that California’s pension increases were untenable. Public officials are
finally coming to this conclusion, too. Gov. Schwarzenegger called the state’s pension benefits
“unsustainable” in June 2009,66 and at a seminar on pension sustainability in August 2009 Dwight
Stenbakken, Executive Deputy Director of the California League of Cities, announced that pension
benefits are “just unsustainable” in their current form and difficult to defend politically.67 At the
same seminar, CalPERS chief actuary Ron Seeling, in a startling admission for one in his position,
admitted that the state’s pension benefits are, indeed, unsustainable. “I don’t want to sugarcoat
anything,” Seeling said. “We are facing decades without significant turnarounds in assets, decades
of—what I, my personal words, nobody else’s—unsustainable pension costs of between 25 percent
of pay for a miscellaneous plan and 40 to 50 percent of pay for a safety plan (police and
firefighters) … unsustainable pension costs. We’ve got to find some other solutions.”68
Even several state Democratic Party leaders, who are traditionally very sympathetic to government
employee labor unions’ interests, have recognized the coming financial crisis caused by expensive
pension benefits and cautioned against too-cozy relationships with labor unions on the issue. At an
October 2009 joint hearing of the Select Committee on Improving Government, state Treasurer
Bill Lockyer warned that without significant reform public pensions will “bankrupt the state.”
Lockyer scolded legislators for their role in the crisis and offered a pessimistic view on the
prospect of reforming the state’s pension system: “It’s impossible for this legislature to reform the
pension system, and if we don’t do it we bankrupt the state. And I don’t think anybody can do it
here because of who elected you [labor unions].”69 And in a January 2010 San Francisco Chronicle
article, former Assembly Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown wrote:
The deal used to be that civil servants were paid less than private sector workers in exchange
for an understanding that they had job security for life.
But we politicians, pushed by our friends in labor, gradually expanded pay and benefits to
private-sector levels while keeping the job protections and layering on incredibly generous
retirement packages that pay ex-workers almost as much as current workers.
Talking about this is politically unpopular and potentially even career suicide for most
officeholders. But at some point, someone is going to have to get honest about the fact that 80
percent of the state, county and city budget deficits are due to employee costs.
Either we do something about it at the ballot box, or a judge will do something about in
Bankruptcy Court. And if you think I'm kidding, just look at Vallejo.70
B. Benefit Creep
The government need not change pension benefit rates to increase benefits. For decades, “benefit
creep” has allowed more government employees to move up into higher benefit plans. This is
particularly true for “public safety” employees. As a Sacramento Bee article relates,
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Prison cooks, plumbers, groundskeepers, teachers, dentists, business managers, and
“audiovisual specialists”—all are among the 70,000 state workers considered police or
firefighters, eligible to retire with better benefits than other state workers.
In fact, any worker in a California prison regularly in contact with inmates is considered a
police officer, rewarded with a richer public pension for helping safeguard society.
The same goes for workers in state mental hospitals—from psychiatrists to podiatrists—who
supervise patients.71
In the 1960s, roughly one in 20 state employees received public safety pensions. Now it is one in
three workers.72
The passage of SB 183 in 2002 continued this trend by reclassifying the 3,200 members of the
California Union of Safety Employees (CAUSE) as public safety employees, affording them an
immediate 25 percent increase in pension benefits. As a result, milk testers, billboard inspectors,
DMV driving examiners, forensic pathologists and deputy directors at the Department of Real
Estate (among others) are now included among today’s “public safety” workers. The cost of SB
183 is estimated at $216 million over 20 years.73
C. State Employee Growth
California’s growing pension obligations have not stopped it from adding to the ranks of its state
employees. Since 1998, the state workforce has grown by over 31 percent, and today the state
employs more than 356,000 workers, including the state university systems.74
Even as California has struggled with a severe economic recession, plummeting revenues and
record budget deficits, and Gov. Schwarzenegger issued a supposed hiring freeze, the state
continued to hire more workers. Incredibly, the state has added over 13,000 employees since the
onset of the economic recession in 2008 and continued hiring even during the worst of the
recession.75 According to a Sacramento Bee analysis, “From June 2008 to February 2009, most
state agencies either increased or kept the same number of full-time employees,” resulting in a net
increase of about 2,000 workers.76
Of course, more workers means more future pension obligations. The state cannot continue to
expand at its current rate, particularly during an economic contraction, without plunging itself even
further into debt and increasing taxes on a population that is already one of the most heavily taxed
in the nation.77
Businesses and workers in the private sector have had to adjust to economic realities during the
current recession. The government should certainly not be shielded from its effects. To do so
would place an increasing and unfair burden on the private sector to prop up government programs
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and employees at a time when taxpayers in the private sector are seeing salary and benefit cuts and
losing their jobs.
D. The Rising Costs of Retiree Health Care Benefits and Other Post-Employment
Benefits
In addition to pension benefits, California offers other post-employment benefits (OPEB),78 such as
health care and dental benefits, that are extremely generous as well. After remaining fairly stable
during the 1980s and 1990s, retiree health care costs started shooting up after 2000, and have more
than tripled in the last decade (see Figure 2). These rising costs have led to an unfunded OPEB
liability of nearly $52 billion,79 and unless the state starts paying more than the bare minimum
needed to fund retiree health care costs each year (this is akin to making the minimum payments on
a credit card bill) that total is expected to rise to $71 billion in 10 years.80
Figure 2: California Retiree Health and Dental Care Spending, 1984-85 to 2009-10
Source: California Legislative Analyst’s Office, “State of California Expenditures, 1984-85 to 2010-11,” updated
January 2010, http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/LAOMenus/lao_menu_economics.aspx.
As health care costs continue to increase rapidly, they are consuming an ever-larger portion of
employee retirement costs. After posting double-digit year-over-year cost increases for most of the
last decade, medical cost increases have not slowed down much even during the recession. They
rose another 9.9 percent in 2008 and 9.2 percent in 2009, and are expected to rise 9.0 percent in
2010, according to a June 2009 PricewaterhouseCoopers Health Research Institute report.81
Unlike pension benefits, OPEB are on a pay-as-you-go system, so the liability is not even partially
funded. This is an even more expensive way to fund benefits, and the state could save on costs in
the long term by making greater contributions in the near term and establishing a trust fund to
accumulate assets, referred to as “pre-funding.”
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The state covers approximately 85 percent of health care premiums for active state employees. The
benefits are even better for retirees, covering 100 percent of health care costs for retirees and 90
percent of costs for their families. This benefit can cost the state close to $1,200 a month per
retiree, according to CalPERS.82 Retiree health benefits are generally not offered in the private
sector, so California should reduce its retiree health care benefits, just as private firms have been
forced to reduce their health care costs for active workers, and/or require employees to make
suitable contributions for their retiree health costs. Several states, including Connecticut, Kentucky
and New Hampshire, are now requiring employees to make contributions toward their retiree
health care benefits in addition to contributions to their pension plans. Kentucky requires new
employees to allocate 1 percent of their salaries for post-retirement health care and other nonpension benefits, and Connecticut demands that new employees, and current employees with fewer
than five years of work experience with the state, contribute 3 percent of their salaries.83
Since the determination of appropriate contribution and benefit levels would still involve a great
deal of guesswork concerning future medical cost inflation, mortality rates, Medicare availability
and other actuarial assumptions, an even better solution would be to shift to a defined-contribution
OPEB plan, medical savings accounts or health savings accounts for state employees.
E. Other Contributing Factors
1. Unrealistic Actuarial Assumptions
Contributions to defined-benefit plans are based upon actuarial assumptions designed to ensure that
the plan is sufficiently funded to cover its benefit payouts. These assumptions include what the
average annual pension fund return will be, how much salaries and inflation will increase, how
soon employees will retire, how long retirees will live, what disability rates will be, and so on.
Complicating matters is the fact that these assumptions must be projected out decades into the
future, rendering them little more than educated guesswork. If the actuarial assumptions prove to
be wrong and costs are higher than expected, taxpayers are liable for the difference.
One of the major assumptions that has proven to be overly optimistic is the rate at which the
pension systems discount their future liabilities. Public pension systems use the average annual rate
of return that they expect their pension fund investments to achieve as the discount rate. This tends
to encourage riskier investment strategies, which may offer higher returns, because this allows
pension systems to use a higher discount rate and thus makes liability estimates look lower to the
public.
The danger, of course, is that the risk does not pay off and investments underperform, resulting in
larger than expected liabilities (as we have now witnessed firsthand). The CalPERS Public
Employees’ Retirement Fund, for example, has significantly underperformed its assumed 7.75
percent average rate of return84 for the one-year, three-year, five-year and 10-year periods (see
Table 3).85 CalSTRS has an even more aggressive 8.00 percent assumed rate of return.86 Investor
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extraordinaire Warren Buffet has said that such assumptions are much too high, and has set a more
reasonable assumption of between 6 percent and 6.9 percent for the pension plan in his own
company, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., over the past decade.87 Some financial advisors have suggested
that an even lower rate, such as 5 percent, would be more reasonable.88 Unlike the public sector,
private sector pension plans are required by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to base
investment return assumptions on corporate bond rates. As of December 2008, the top 100 private
pension plans had an average assumed rate of return of 6.36 percent.89
Because vested employee benefits are constitutionally protected in California and many other
states, the mismatch in the risk of pension plans’ investment portfolios and benefit obligations is
greater in the public sector. The risk of the state defaulting on pension benefits is virtually zero, yet
the state’s pension funds utilize aggressive discount rates to reflect the risky investments they must
make to achieve their 7.75 percent or 8 percent assumed average annual returns. For this reason,
many researchers and financial experts have recommended using more conservative discount rates
such as municipal bond or U.S. Treasury interest rates to better match the risk of public pension
funds’ assets and liabilities.90
Criticism of overly aggressive pension fund actuarial assumptions and the significant investment
declines experienced by pension funds have prompted several public pension funds around the
country to lower their earnings expectations, and now CalPERS and CalSTRS are considering
reducing their return assumptions as well, although no decisions are expected before this fall for
CalSTRS, and likely not until February 2011 for CalPERS.91 This would be a prudent move,
considering the mounting financial expert consensus that investments will earn less than the
pension funds’ assumed earnings rates for a prolonged period of time. Even one of CalPERS’s own
outside investment managers, the chief executive of BlackRock Inc., warned CalPERS officials
last summer that investment returns will be “subpar for many years.”92
Table 3: CalPERS Historic Investment Returns
Period
Fiscal year to date ended 7/31/09
3 years for period ended 7/31/09
5 years for period ended 7/31/09
10 years for period ended 7/31/09
Return
–18.15%
–2.58%
3.50%
3.25%
Source: California Public Employees’ Retirement System, “Facts at a Glance: Investment,” October 2009, p. 2,
http://www.calpers.ca.gov/eip-docs/about/facts/investme.pdf.
Other accounting tricks can make public pension funds appear to be in better financial shape than
they really are. CalPERS, for example, has employed a strategy of “smoothing” pension fund gains
and losses over a period of years. While this can be a reasonable strategy to reduce the volatility of
government employer contributions to the pension system, as severe investment losses are spread
over a number of years so that the local governments that use CalPERS as their pension plan
administrator do not have to jolt their budgets to make up shortfalls at once, CalPERS has taken
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this strategy to the extreme, allowing losses to be spread over 30 years. By comparison, the most
common smoothing period used by other states is five years.93
In 2005, CalPERS changed its policy of spreading gains and losses out over three years to
spreading them out over 15 years. In 2009, it adopted a new policy to allow local governments to
isolate the extraordinary investment losses of the past two years, phase in the higher extra
payments that are required to make up for them over the next three years, and then pay them off
over the next 30 years. According to an LAO analysis, this will delay big increases in local
government pension contributions (for CalPERS participants) that would otherwise occur in FY
2011-12, but is likely to result in even higher contribution rates by FY 2013-14, “which may
persist for the next three decades.”94
In adopting the 30-year smoothing policy, allowing governments to underfund the system and
postpone higher contribution rates while engaging in riskier investments and wishful thinking that
extraordinary market gains in the future will bail them out, CalPERS has repeated the same
mistakes that have gotten state and local governments into their dire pension straits in the first
place. When the CalPERS plan was unveiled, Gov. Schwarzenegger strongly criticized it, saying,
“By deferring pension contributions, CalPERS would not only be gambling that its investment
earnings in this economy will grow faster than its pension obligations but would also be using our
kids’ money to do so because they are the ones stuck footing the bill.”95 Added Schwarzenegger
economic advisor David Crane, the plan is “at best imprudent and at worst dangerous to future
generations.”96 Even CalPERS’s own analysis of its plan contained a cautionary note: “It is
important to note that unless the investment markets recover, delaying increases in contribution
rates only means that more money will have to be collected in the future.”97 Accounting for losses
may cause some short-term budgetary pain, but this would be more financially responsible than
deferring or hiding the true costs until future generations realize they have been saddled with a
much bigger than expected bill.
The trouble with defined-benefit plans is that the true costs of pension benefits may easily be
hidden, and pension funding ratios overstated, by overly optimistic actuarial assumptions. These
errors may be intentional—to make pension systems appear to be better funded than they really
are—or unintentional and simply inaccurate, but, as Edward Siedle, a former Securities and
Exchange Commission attorney who now owns a business that investigates government pension
fund abuses, observes, “In my experience, every pension fund I’ve ever seen has an actuarial
assumption that is more akin to wishful thinking than what is reasonably foreseeable.”98 Texas
Pension Review Board member Frederick “Shad” Rowe echoes this sentiment: “My experience has
been that pension funds misfire from every direction. They overstate expected returns and
understate future costs. The combination is debilitating over time.”99
2. Demographics
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Demographic trends are working against the affordability of defined-benefit plans. People are
spending more time in retirement as life spans continue to increase and people retire younger than
in the past. Moreover, the Baby Boomer generation is starting to retire, which will only add to
pension costs.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, during the 20th century, the average American life
span rose by more than 30 years.100 Of course, the more time spent in retirement, the greater the
costs are to employers. Consider the trend in the length of retirement over the second half of the
twentieth century:
When Social Security was invented, life expectancy at age 65 for a man was about 12 years. By
1950, life expectancy had risen to almost 13 years and the average age at which a man applied
for Social Security was 68.7. Paradoxically, the average age for applying for Social Security
benefits fell to less than 64 in 2000 while expected life at age 65 rose to 15.7 years. That
suggests that the time a typical man spends in retirement has nearly doubled since 1950. This
is despite the fact that people are healthier at every age and the physical demands associated
with work have fallen as mechanization has increased and the economy has shifted more
toward services.101 (Emphasis added)
Continuing advances in medical technology make it likely that this trend will continue into the
future. Thus, it will be more and more expensive to retire in the years ahead. Employers must
consider this when establishing or revising their retirement benefit levels.
3. The One-Year Final Salary Rule
One expensive defined-benefit plan unique to California involves the way an employee’s final
salary is calculated for the purpose of determining pension benefits. All other states use the average
of an employee’s final three or five years of salary (or highest three- or five-year period) in order to
avoid situations where employees retire soon after receiving their final raise, but a provision
inserted to SB 2465 in 1990 changed state retirement rules to calculate pension benefits based on
an employee’s highest salary in a single year. (California had previously used a three-year
average.)
As Wisconsin legislative counsel William Ford points out, “Other states have not adopted the oneyear formula because they are concerned about the type of problem you have in California. It
makes the system easier to manipulate to increase pensions.”102 The law was expected to cost an
additional $63 million per year. In reality, it has proven to be 50 percent more costly, totaling more
than $100 million annually.103
The state and some of its government employee unions have agreed to go back to the three-year
average in recent years, albeit through the collective bargaining process rather than the stricter
legislative process, though pensions for firefighters, highway patrol officers and peace officers are
still based on the one-year final salary rule.
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4. Pension Spiking
In addition to using the one-year final salary rule to increase retirement benefits, employees may
intentionally inflate their final compensation so as to increase their pension benefits, a process
known as “pension spiking,” by having accrued vacation time, unused sick leave, excessive
overtime, shift differentials, education incentives, cashed in auto allowances, uniform allowances,
etc. included in their final salaries. The passage of SB 53 in 1993 made it more difficult to spike
CalPERS pensions by manipulating final-year pay, although “loopholes in state law make pension
spiking easy and legal.”104
There are other ways state employees can game the system, too. State workers can increase their
pensions by purchasing up to five years of service, called “air time,” which they can count toward
their retirement, without paying the full actuarial costs of those benefits.
Workers who have already retired may even enhance their retirement compensation by returning to
work for the state and collecting both a salary and a pension. Some states prohibit the practice or
force employees to forfeit their retirement checks when they go back on the state payroll, but it is
legal in California so long as employees do not work more than 960 hours in a year, about halftime. According to the Los Angeles Times, more than 5,600 state employees are currently “doubledipping” in California, a figure 57 percent higher than a decade ago.105 “The notion is we have
retirement systems so once people stop working they are provided for,” said Alicia H. Munnell,
director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. “It seems just not acceptable to
taxpayers that people are earning a salary and a retirement check.”106 And former California
Assemblyman Keith Richman says that those collecting both a state paycheck and retirement
payments are “ripping off the taxpayers.”107
While air-time purchases and limited double-dipping are legal forms of compensation
enhancements, other pension-spiking schemes are simply fraudulent, or encouraged by loopholes
in workers’ compensation and disability pension laws. Take the example of “chief’s disease,” for
instance. Chief’s disease is the practice of claiming a questionable work-related injury during one’s
final year of employment in order to receive greater retirement benefits, and is particularly
common among police and firefighter employees (hence, the name). According to the Sacramento
Bee, over 80 percent of California Highway Patrol chiefs who retired between 2000 and 2004 filed
disability claims just before they retired, “though many of the alleged medical problems had been
building for years and were common for those in any field who are nearing retirement age.”108
A successful injury claim allows the employee to take a one-year leave of absence while collecting
his or her full salary tax-free. The lack of tax withholding allows the employee to realize a higher
salary than he or she would if he or she were working. Thus, the employee benefits from claiming
an additional year of service without actually working that full year and also gets to claim a higher
salary (one or both of which will increase his pension benefits upon retirement). The filing of the
workers’ compensation claim, moreover, opens the door to a disability pension, which grants full
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medical benefits and greater benefits to the retiree’s spouse upon the retiree’s death. On top of that,
half of the amount of the disability pension is tax-free.109
Apart from the obvious fraud problem, liberal workers’ compensation and disability pension rules
as to what constitutes a “work-related” injury contribute to abuses of the system. State law
presumes, for example, that police officers and firefighters suffering from illnesses such as cancer
and heart disease were injured on the job, thus automatically qualifying them for disability
pensions.110 This has also become a problem for local governments that have adopted this state
government policy. Paul Derse, a deputy executive administrator from Ventura County, illustrated
the waste that such loose disability retirement rules invite: “We had a four-pack-a-day smoker who
was presumed to have cancer from his job.”111
5. Poor Fiscal Planning and “Contribution Holidays”
Pension systems often get into trouble when the government employer neglects to make
contributions as a result of strong pension fund performance. When investment returns are so high
that the employer is not required to make any contributions to the system that year, the employer is
said to enjoy a “contribution holiday.”
As noted above, however, taking a holiday can lead to serious consequences when portfolio
performance falters, contribution requirements rise, and the government is left unprepared to adjust
its budget accordingly. Governments tend to follow a pattern, however, of spending rather than
saving during the good years. Then they are unwilling to cut back, even as revenues (from pension
fund investments or taxes in general) do not rise fast enough to support the spending. The
correction typically takes years longer than in the private sector.
This is essentially what happened with California during the stock market run-up of the dot-com
bubble of the late 1990s. Pension fund performance was so great that the state contributed virtually
nothing to the pension system in fiscal years 1999-00 and 2000-01.112 But, as California’s coffers
were overflowing, largely as a result of capital gains taxes paid on taxpayers’ soaring investments,
this is precisely the time the state should have been socking away some pension contributions for a
rainy day. When the stock market inevitably reversed course, the state was caught unaware and had
to make significantly higher contributions for which it had not budgeted.
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Part 3
Pension Reform Proposals
It became clear after only a few years that California’s enhanced pension benefits were
unsustainable. There have been a couple of efforts to fix the system, although no significant
reforms have yet been implemented.
In December 2004, then-Assemblyman Richman offered a plan, Assembly Constitutional
Amendment 5, that would have switched the state’s pension system to a defined-contribution
model. (See the following section for more discussion of defined-contribution plans and their
advantages over defined-benefit plans.) Under the proposal, all state employees hired after July 1,
2007, would have been enrolled in a 401(k)-style plan. Those that were already in the existing
defined-benefit plan would have stayed in this system.
Gov. Schwarzenegger supported a plan like Richman’s and prepared to place a proposition before
the voters to switch to a defined-contribution system for future employees. However, public safety
unions utilized a controversial ruling by Attorney General Bill Lockyer that suggested the proposal
did not explicitly protect death and disability benefits and thus would result in their elimination.
Gov. Schwarzenegger claimed that this was not his intention and the initiative did not have this
effect. In spite of the fact that his proposal had already garnered 400,000 signatures, he pulled the
measure and the reform effort died in 2005.
Schwarzenegger revived the idea of pension reform in 2009, although instead of switching to a
defined-contribution plan his proposal would scale back the existing defined-benefit plan and
create a lower tier of benefits for new state employees. The plan would essentially return benefit
levels to those offered prior to the 1999 pension increase, meaning that new workers would receive
a smaller portion of their final salaries as pensions and most would have to work five years longer
before being eligible to retire. In addition, retiree health care benefits would be reduced and the
final salary used to determine pension benefits for firefighters and Highway Patrol officers would
be based on a three-year average of their highest earnings, instead of the highest single year of
earnings (see Table 4). The governor’s office estimated that such changes would save the state $95
billion over 30 years.113 “Everyone understands we are running out of money,” Schwarzenegger
told reporters in July 2009. “We cannot continue promising people things we cannot deliver on.”114
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Table 4: Schwarzenegger 2009 Pension Reform Proposal
Pension Formulas
Firefighters and Highway Patrol Officers
Peace Officers
Other State Safety Employees
Miscellaneous Employees
Final Salary Calculation – Firefighters
and Highway Patrol Officers
Retiree Health Care
Vesting
State Contribution
Current Pension System
Schwarzenegger Proposal
3% at 50
3% at 50
2.5% at 55
2.5% at 63
2% at 55
3% at 55
2.5% at 55
2% at 55
2.418% at 63
2% at 60
Highest single year
Highest 3-year average
State pays 50% of insurance costs after
10 years worked; Portion rises 5%
annually thereafter (100% after 20 years
worked)
100% of premiums
Lifetime benefits only for retirees who
have worked for 25 years
An amount that matches the
contribution for active state employees
(generally about 85% of premiums)
Source: State of California, Office of the Governor, “Fact Sheet: Reforming State Employee Retirement
Compensation,” July 1, 2009, http://gov.ca.gov/index.php?/fact-sheet/12836/.
Schwarzenegger tried to include the pension reform proposal in the July 2009 state budget deal, but
lawmakers balked at addressing the issue and the governor abandoned the effort.
While the Schwarzenegger proposal would be an improvement over the current, overly generous
pension system, it would still be just nibbling at the edges when the system needs comprehensive
reform. The dozen or so other states, including Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New York and
Rhode Island, that are attempting similar pension reforms such as raising retirement ages, reducing
benefit formulas, increasing employee contribution rates and cracking down on pension spiking
practices115 are likely to come to the same conclusion. Moreover, it would be too easy for the
legislature to simply raise benefits again in the future and get the state right back into the same
mess it is in now. In order to truly reform the system and return fiscal responsibility to the system,
California and other state and local governments must follow the lead of the private sector and
switch to a defined-contribution system in line with private sector compensation levels for all new
employees.
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Part 4
A Way Out: Switch to DefinedContribution Retirement Plans
A. The Rise of Defined-Contribution Plans
Private sector pension plans have had to face the same demographic pressures and rising pension
and health care costs as have government plans. The difference has been in how they have reacted
to these rising costs. While private sector firms must compete with each other and offer attractive
compensation packages—including pension benefits—to entice the best-qualified workers to work
for them, they are also constrained by the need to control costs and maintain profitability.
Government does not face this efficiency/profitability constraint since government is the ultimate
monopolist and can simply raise taxes, issue bonds or sacrifice service quality to maintain its
growth. Hence, governments have been much slower than the private sector to react to rising
pension costs.
That said, defined-contribution plans have been growing in popularity within both the private
sector and the government. While they first caught on with the private sector, soaring pension and
health care costs, combined with the unpredictability of contribution levels associated with
defined-benefit plans, have caused the government to take a closer look at them as well in recent
years.
The trend toward defined-contribution plans has been substantial. The popularity of definedcontribution retirement plans has boomed since the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of
1974 (ERISA) became effective in 1975. In 1975, approximately 28 percent of all private sector,
tax-qualified retirement plan assets were held in defined-contribution plans. This rate remained
fairly unchanged until the early 1980s when the emergence of 401(k) plans began a dramatic
increase in defined-contribution assets.116 This percentage rose steadily and consistently until 1998,
when more than 52 percent of all private plan assets were held in defined-contribution plans,
before leveling off somewhat.117
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics March 2009 National Compensation Survey, 84
percent of state and local government workers had access to a defined-benefit retirement plan,
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including 96 percent of government union workers, while only 30 percent had access to a definedcontribution plan.118 By contrast, a mere 21 percent of private sector workers had access to a
defined-benefit plan (although 68 percent of private industry union workers had access to such a
plan), compared to 61 percent who had access to a defined-contribution plan.119
The PBGC: Insurer of Last Resort for Private Pension Plans
The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC) was established by the Employee
Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) in response to the high-profile bankruptcy of
the Studebaker Corporation and other firms during the 1960s. The PBGC receives no tax
revenues, but is funded instead through mandatory insurance premiums paid by pension plan
sponsors (employers), as well as investment returns and assets from pension plans taken over
by the agency.
When a company’s financial situation becomes so dire that it cannot afford to pay its
pension obligations, the PBGC may end, or “terminate” the plan and take over the liabilities,
paying out benefits up to a maximum level that is established by law and adjusted annually. For
plans ended in 2009 and 2010, workers who retire at age 65 may receive a maximum pension
payment of $4,500 per month, or $54,000 a year. Once a plan is terminated, employees can no
longer continue to earn additional benefits. The PBGC is currently responsible for paying the
pensions of nearly 1.5 million people (including abut 744,000 who have already retired) in
roughly 4,000 plans that have been terminated.120
In addition to the “distress terminations” noted above, a healthy company may opt to
discontinue its defined-benefit pension plan through a “standard termination” upon payment of
all accrued benefits to covered employees and retirees. (Note that in this scenario, the
company’s pension obligations must be fully funded before the plan can be terminated.)
The increasing number of distress terminations in recent years has put a large strain on the
PBGC’s finances. After about a quarter-century of stability, the agency’s coffers began to take a
turn for the worse about a decade ago. The PBGC went from a $9.7 billion surplus in 2000 to a
$23.3 billion deficit in 2004, a swing of $33 billion in just four years (see figure below).121 It
recovered somewhat during the ensuing few years, shaving the deficit roughly in half to $10.7
billion in 2008 before plunging back down to a $21.1 billion deficit in 2009.122
The magnitude of the deficits is alarming, especially considering that the PBGC’s implicit
backing by the federal government means that taxpayers could be on the hook for a bailout
similar to that of the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.
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Figure 3: PBGC Surplus/Deficit Single-Employer Program, 1980-2009
Sources: Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, Pension Insurance Data Book 2002, p.29,
http://www.pbgc.gov/docs/2002databook.pdf; Pension Insurance Data Book 2008, p. 40,
http://www.pbgc.gov/docs/2008databook.pdf; and 2009 Annual Management Report, November 13, 2009, p. 6,
http://www.pbgc.gov/docs/2009amr.pdf.
B. Public Sector vs. Private Sector Pay and Benefits
It is often argued that governments must pay greater benefits to their employees because they
cannot pay salaries as high as those in the private sector and they need to offer greater benefits and
job security to effectively compete with the private sector for quality workers. While perhaps the
argument could be made a generation or two ago, it clearly does not hold true today. Now
government employees typically make more, on average, in both wages and benefits than their
private sector counterparts.
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employer Costs for Employee Compensation report
for December 2009, state and local government employees earned total compensation of $39.60 an
hour, compared to $27.42 an hour for private industry workers—a difference of over 44 percent.
This includes 35 percent higher wages and nearly 69 percent greater benefits (see Table 5).123 Data
from the U.S. Census Bureau similarly show that in 2007 the average annual salary of a California
state government employee was $53,958, nearly 32 percent greater than the average private sector
worker ($40,991).
Table 5: Average Hourly Public Sector and Private Sector Compensation Cost
Comparison, June 2009
Wages and Salaries
Benefits
Total
Private Industry
$19.41
$8.00
$27.42
State and Local Government
$26.11
$13.49
$39.60
Source: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employer Costs for Employee Compensation—
December 2009,” March 10, 2010, pp. 8, 10, http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf.
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Clearly, the greater benefits of government workers are not justified on any salary discrepancy
basis. Quite the contrary, it would seem that government employees are overcompensated in terms
of both salaries and wages.
C. Advantages of Defined-Contribution Plans
1. Stability and Predictability of Contribution Levels
One of the greatest benefits of a defined-contribution plan, from an employer’s perspective, is that
it provides a great deal of stability since contribution levels (i.e., costs) are known in advance and
do not change much from year to year. This is a sharp contrast to the volatility in contribution
levels experienced under defined-benefit plans. For the government, this is particularly helpful in
the budgeting process, as legislators—and the taxpayers on the hook for any funding shortfalls—do
not have to worry about being surprised by greater-than-expected contribution requirements when
the stock market sours and the pension fund’s investment returns plummet. Under a definedcontribution plan, since the employer’s contribution is simply the agreed upon portion of payroll,
there is no such thing as an unfunded liability. Moreover, if lawmakers decide to increase benefits
to government employees (which they still can do) it is transparent and cannot create overnight
actuarial liabilities, as happened in California in 1999.
2. Choice for Workers
Defined-contribution plans allow employees the freedom to manage their own retirement accounts
and invest their own money as they see fit. People have differing retirement needs and investment
goals. They also have different levels of risk aversion. Moreover, risk tolerances and investment
strategies change with age. Defined-contribution plans allow employees to choose growth-oriented
investments when they are young and then switch to more conservative investments as they
approach retirement. Defined-contribution plans offer individuals the freedom and the flexibility to
tailor their investment strategies (aggressive, conservative, or some combination of the two) to best
satisfy their unique requirements for themselves and their families, rather than forcing participants
into a one-size-fits-all investment pool as under a defined-benefit plan.
3. Portability
Since employer retirement contributions are paid directly into individual accounts under a definedcontribution plan, it is easy for workers to take their accumulated funds with them when they
change jobs. Upon the employee’s departure, both employer and employee contributions can be
cashed out and “rolled over” to a future employer’s plan. Under a defined-benefit plan, by contrast,
only employee contributions may be cashed out.
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This portability is particularly appealing to employees in an age where the average worker switches
jobs numerous times during his or her career. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the
median job tenure in 2008 was 4.1 years, and merely 2.7 years for employees aged 25 to 34.124
In addition, the vesting period for defined-contribution plans is typically only a few years, whereas
the vesting period for defined-benefit plans is often 10 years or more. Thus, government employees
that might have otherwise been vested under a defined-contribution plan may leave their jobs
before they are vested in their defined-benefit plans, thereby foregoing any retirement benefits and
receiving only their own contributions plus interest. Indeed, this has been a widespread problem in
California, where 70 percent of state and local government employees lose all employer
contributions because they leave their jobs before satisfying the 10-year vesting requirement.125 In
Michigan, 45 percent of state workers and 65 percent of public education employees effectively
receive no benefits for this reason.126 Furthermore, the portability of defined-contribution plans
may be especially attractive to women who decide to leave their jobs in order to have children and
cannot wait 10 years until they are vested before starting or expanding their families.
4. Younger Worker Appeal
As a TIAA-CREF publication notes, shifting to a defined-contribution plan provides particular
benefits to younger workers—a demographic government recruiters are desperately pursuing
across the nation:
In a defined contribution plan, contributions made at younger ages will have a longer
investment horizon, potentially growing over many years. This is true even if employees
terminate service after a few years, since accumulations continue to participate in the
accounts’ investment experience. In a traditional defined benefit plan, an employee’s accrued
benefit is generally frozen at the time he or she terminates employment. Even with moderate
inflation, these benefits lose a great deal of their purchasing power by the time the employee
begins retirement income.127
These arguments are supported by various studies that demonstrate potential benefits in definedcontribution plans for younger workers, including higher long-term value of returns.128
5. Rational and Individual Investment Choices
No one has a greater interest in the proper investment of retirement funds than the future retiree
himself. Government pension boards, by contrast, are inherently political bodies whose investment
decisions are often colored by political influence or ideology (as evidenced by the current federal
criminal investigation into possible influence-peddling related to CalPERS investment decisions,
not to mention a pay-to-play scandal involving New York state pension fund managers that led to
six people pleading guilty and a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission inquiry129). Under a
defined-contribution plan, depending upon the investment choices offered by the employer, the
individual is free to invest in companies for the purpose of furthering a political ideology or
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cause—even if it means sacrificing greater returns—but others are not forced to suffer the
consequences if such investments offend their values or post sub-par returns.
6. Accountability and Transparency
Since defined-contribution retirement accounts are managed by the participants themselves, and
not a government pension board, there is complete accountability and transparency with regard to
investment decisions; these decisions are simply the responsibility of the individual participant.
Thus, there are no backroom deals, no conflicts of interest, and no need to worry about the lack of
financial disclosure—all problems that have plagued the pension boards of government definedbenefit plans.
D. Government Defined-Contribution Plans
While once considered an unthinkable impossibility, growing public awareness of and anger over
the scope of public pension problems and the growing gap between public and private sector
compensation have led to momentum for a switch from defined-benefit plans to definedcontribution plans for new government workers. A January 2010 Public Policy Institute of
California poll, for instance, revealed that 76 percent of Californians view the amount of money
being spent on the public employee pension systems as a problem, a significant increase from the
response to a similar question in January 2005. In addition, 67 percent (and 70 percent of likely
voters) favored changing from a defined-benefit plan to a defined-contribution plan for new public
employees. Such a measure was favored by strong majorities across political parties, regions and
demographic groups.130
All three major candidates for governor have capitalized on the public sentiment by calling for
public pension reform. Both Republican contenders, former eBay president and CEO Meg
Whitman and State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, have called for moving new state
employees to defined-contribution plans, while Democratic candidate Jerry Brown, former
California governor and the state’s current attorney general, has said that although he supports
reform, particularly of retiree health benefits, he does not favor switching to a defined-contribution
system.131
Numerous states—including Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Maine, Michigan, Montana,
North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia and Washington—already offer
defined-contribution plans to at least some of their state employees.132 Alaska and Michigan have
switched completely from their traditional plans to defined-contribution plans, Indiana and Oregon
require their employees to participate in both a defined-benefit and a defined-contribution plan, and
several others—including Colorado, Florida, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina,
Washington and Vermont—offer defined-contribution plans as an option in addition to existing
defined-benefit plans. Consider the following examples of government defined-contribution plans:
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1. Michigan. All employees hired after March 3, 1997, have belonged to a defined-contribution
plan in Michigan. The government employers (departments, agencies, etc.) contribute 4 percent of
the employee’s salary to the plan and will match employee contributions of an additional 3 percent.
2. Alaska. Alaska became the second state to switch completely to a defined-contribution
retirement plan in 2005. Suffering from an estimated unfunded liability of $5.6 billion and plagued
by double-digit increases in medical costs and poor investment returns, Alaska changed its system
in an attempt to stem the tide of rising costs and instill a measure of predictability to the state’s
contribution requirements.
3. Florida. Florida began offering a defined-contribution plan in addition to its traditional plan in
2002. Employees were given the option of remaining in the existing defined-benefit plan,
transferring accumulated benefits to the defined-contribution plan, or keeping their accrued balance
in the old plan but directing all future contributions to the defined-contribution plan. Employees do
not contribute anything to either plan. For 2004, state employers contributed 6.2 percent to the
defined-benefit plan and 9 percent to the defined-contribution plan for regular employees.
4. Oregon. While Florida began offering its defined-contribution plan mostly to provide its
employees a greater choice in their retirement plans, Oregon chose to revamp its pension system to
save money. State employees hired after August 29, 2003, participate in both a definedcontribution and a new defined-benefit plan. Now all employee contributions go into the definedcontribution plans and all employer contributions are made to a scaled-down defined-benefit plan.
Legislative analysts estimated that the new pension plan would save an estimated $7 billion over
30 years, although court rulings invalidated portions of the reform, reducing the savings
potential.133
5. Nebraska. Nebraska became the first state to shift to defined-contribution benefit plans when
the State Employees’ Retirement Plan was initiated as a defined-contribution plan in 1964.
(Teachers, judges and highway patrol officers remained on defined-benefit plans.) The state then
switched from its defined-contribution plan to a hybrid, cash-balance plan (a defined-benefit plan
with some defined-contribution plan features) in 2002 (effective January 1, 2003) after a study
conducted in 2000 revealed that those in the defined-contribution plan achieved a 6 to 7 percent
average annual return versus 11 percent for the defined-benefit (state-managed) plans over a 30year period.134 It would appear that three bad years in the stock market from 2000 to 2002 were the
final straw. Under the cash-balance plan, beneficiaries are guaranteed a minimum return of the
greater of 5 percent or the federal mid-term rate plus 1.5 percent.135
Tellingly, however, there has not been an exodus from the defined-contribution plan. In fact,
approximately 70 percent of the members of the defined-contribution plan chose to remain under
that plan when the cash-balance plan went into effect.136 If the defined-contribution plan was so
disastrous, as critics claimed, many more people would have switched out of the plan. Apparently,
people value the freedom to make their own retirement investment decisions.
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Closer to home, in Pacific Grove, California, voters in November 2008 approved Measure Y, an
advisory vote on whether the city should shift out of the CalPERS defined-benefit pension system
and establish its own 401(k)-style defined-contribution retirement plan, with over 56% of the vote.
According to Mayor Dan Cort, “It’s [the state retirement system is] a burden, expensive, an
unfunded liability.” Added Cort, “Cities all across California are being crushed by pensions.”137
Pension fund losses have made a switch prohibitively expensive in the immediate term, since the
city would have to return to full funding before being allowed to exit the CalPERS system,
although the city still plans to leave the system when the pension fund’s investments recover a bit
and the transition is not so costly.
In addition, a June 2009 Ventura County Grand Jury report entitled, “Ventura County Pension: ‘An
Uncontrollable Cost,’” recommended that the county study switching from its existing definedbenefit system to a combination of reduced defined benefits and a defined-contribution plan.138
Unfortunately, the recommendation to move toward at least a partial defined-contribution system
has thus far fallen on deaf ears. At the city level, Ventura Mayor Christy Weir even went so far as
to write in an August 2009 column for the Ventura County Star, “The statewide pension system for
state, county, school district and local governments is not financially sustainable. I believe Ventura
can be a leader in pension reform. That likely means moving from ‘defined benefit’ plans (which
guarantee a certain retirement income and are increasingly costly to taxpayers) to ‘defined
contribution’ plans (which are more fiscally feasible) for new employees.”139
The TIAA-CREF Institute conducted a best practice benchmark analysis of existing definedcontribution pension plans in the public sector in an April 2008 report. Among the study’s
recommended features for a public sector defined-contribution plan were the following:

Mandatory enrollment of employees in the defined-contribution plan

A one-year vesting requirement

A range of investment options, but not too many (no more than 15 to 20)

A target wage replacement (how much of one’s final earnings are replaced by pension
benefits, 401(k) earnings, Social Security benefits, etc.) of 75-85 percent [This seems very
high—in fact, it is almost as high as the most generous public safety employees’ pensions
currently offered in California—but for the sake of argument, this would translate to a total
contribution (including both the employer’s and the employee’s share) of approximately
10-12 percent for employees eligible for Social Security, and 18-20 percent for those who
are not.]

Basic retirement investment information, such as investment advisory services, made
available to employees140
The mere act of switching to a defined-contribution plan will not cure all pension system ills,
however. Court decisions have found that government employee pension benefits are protected and
cannot be reduced for current employees, so any reduction in benefits would only apply to new
hires.141 This means that cost savings from a new, less generous plan would start out rather small,
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but would eventually grow and become significant over time as more employees are enrolled in the
new system.
Moreover, depending upon the government contribution level, and any additional matching
contribution amounts, defined-contribution plans could be just as lavish as defined-benefit plans. A
government switching to a defined-contribution plan should, therefore, study private sector
defined-contribution plans in order to determine equitable levels of compensation.
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Part 5
Voter Approval Requirements
In addition to switching new government employees to a defined-contribution retirement system,
the implementation of a requirement that voters ratify any increases in public employees’ benefits
could serve as a final check against unreasonable or unsustainable public pension benefits.
This has long been the policy in San Francisco. As a result, despite the city’s liberal and laborfriendly reputation, it has fared relatively well in terms of its pension funding. By contrast, local
governments that have traditionally had more conservative reputations, such as the city of San
Diego and Orange County, have experienced serious problems due to rising pension costs.
Although the pension costs racked up by both governments cannot be rolled back and will have to
be paid one way or another (with the possible exception of the bankruptcy option), both acted to try
to prevent future such problems by adopting voter approval requirements.
San Diego passed its voter approval measure, Proposition B, by an overwhelming 70-30 margin in
November 2006. Orange County followed suit in November 2008 when its citizens passed
Measure J by an even greater 75-25 margin. County Supervisors’ Chairman John Moorlach labeled
Measure J “an insurance policy for the taxpayer,” because it would prevent the kind of private
labor negotiations that led to significant benefits increases in 2001 and 2004, and which were
largely rubber-stamped by county supervisors.142
Voter approval requirements should likewise be employed at the state level. Voters should have the
opportunity to vote on a constitutional amendment to require that future government employee
benefit increases be approved by a vote of the people. The labor unions will certainly resist such an
effort to put in place an additional check on excessive employee benefits increases, but they must
remember that state workers are paid with taxpayers’ money, and taxpayers should have a say in
how their hard-earned money is spent. History has proven California’s political leadership, with
the urging and influence of state employees’ labor unions, to be imprudent stewards of taxpayers’
funds when it comes to government employee compensation. It is time citizens were empowered to
put a stop to such abuses of their trust and livelihoods.
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Part 6
Conclusions
California’s retirement system is broken and in desperate need of reform. Recent poor performance
by pension fund investments will put a strain on state and local governments for years to come, as
they struggle to make greater contributions to the pension system to compensate while
simultaneously trying to balance ever-tighter budgets. But the state’s pension system is afflicted by
more than just bad luck in the stock market, and these investment losses only exposed the
shortcomings of a system that was always prone to volatility.
At the heart of the pension crisis is a set of incentives that encourages policymakers to make
decisions for which they do not have to bear the consequences. Since, under a defined-benefit
retirement system, lawmakers, pension board members and union officials do not bear the costs of
the benefit increases they preside over, there is no incentive for them to show fiscal restraint.
Policy leaders get to reap the political rewards of creating lucrative new benefits for employees or
underfunding a system and freeing those monies for other purposes in the short term, and in the
long term the bills for increased costs they impose on the system will not come due until they are
long gone from their positions of power. The predictable result is promises to pay extravagant
benefits that the state cannot afford. Even the governor, the state treasurer and the chief actuary of
CalPERS now admit that California’s pension benefits are unsustainable.
Most of the public pension “reform” proposals that have been put forth in California and elsewhere
do not go far enough. The entire defined-benefit system is broken, particularly given the cozy
relationships between lawmakers and labor union officials, and only a complete overhaul can
restore fiscal responsibility to the state’s retirement system. Tinkering with the existing definedbenefit retirement system by implementing a lower tier of benefits or increasing retirement ages
does not work because it is too easy to simply increase benefits at a later date—and make those
increases retroactive to boot! California witnessed this first-hand merely a decade ago, when
pensions were increased in 1999 and the lower benefit tier that had been established in 1991 to
address escalating pension costs at the time was eliminated, and those who had been in the lower
tier were awarded the higher benefits as well.
Over the past several decades, the private sector has rapidly shifted away from defined-benefit
plans for good reason: they are expensive, unpredictable and unsustainable in the long run.
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California should follow the private sector’s lead in transitioning to defined-contribution retirement
for all new employees.
Switching to a 401(k)-style defined-contribution plan would afford California lower costs while
offering more stability, transparency and predictability of contribution payments; ensure full
funding of the system; provide employees greater plan portability and greater freedom to invest
their retirement money as they see fit; and remove political influence from investment decisionmaking. While this would have some short-term consequences, requiring the state to effectively
deal with significant exiting liabilities, it would represent a long-term shift that would ultimately
put California on much healthier financial footing. In devising its new retirement plans, the state
should adopt salary and benefit rates that are comparable to those earned in the private sector.
Those who do not work for the government should not be forced to pay for ever-richer benefits for
public employees while they are seeing their own retirement funds erode during difficult economic
times. Requiring voter approval of future government employee benefit increases would serve as a
final check against unwise, overly generous pension enhancements and excessive labor union
influence.
The gap between public and private sector compensation is widening, and taxpayers who are not
on government payrolls are getting increasingly sick of working longer, watching their wages and
benefits decline with the sagging economy, and paying more of their hard-earned—and
dwindling—dollars so that state employees can retire sooner with larger pension checks and better
health benefits. It is only a matter of time before a tipping point is reached and taxpayers clamor in
sufficient numbers for true reform. Let us hope that day comes soon, for the longer reform is
postponed, the greater the unfunded liabilities will become, and the more painful the transition will
be in the long run.
HOW CALIFORNIA’S PUBLIC PENSION SYSTEM BROKE
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33
Part 7
Recommendations
1. Perform an evaluation of wages and benefits offered in the private sector and adjust state
employee compensation to bring it in line with this standard. Repeat such an evaluation every five
years.
2. Close the defined-benefit pension plans for state employees and enroll all new employees in
defined-contribution plans for pensions and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) such as
retiree health care and dental benefits.
3. Adopt more conservative investment strategies and more conservative discount rate assumptions
for current employees’ defined benefit plans.
4. Begin pre-funding OPEB liabilities for employees already in the current system, with the
ultimate goal to achieve full funding.
5. Adopt an amendment to the state constitution requiring all future government employee benefit
increases to be ratified by the voters.
6. Adopt an amendment to the state constitution prohibiting retroactive benefit increases.
7. Eliminate “air-time” purchases to reduce pension spiking and discourage early retirement.
8. Require employees who have previously retired to forfeit their retirement checks while they are
on the state’s payroll to avoid double-dipping.
34
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About the Author
Adam B. Summers is a policy analyst at Reason Foundation. He is also the Managing Editor of
Reason’s Privatization Watch publication. He has written extensively on privatization, government
reform, individual liberty, law and economics, public pension reform, occupational licensing and
various other political and economic topics.
Mr. Summers’s articles have been published by The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, San
Francisco Chronicle, San Diego Union-Tribune, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Orange County
Register, Los Angeles Daily News, Baltimore Sun, Los Angeles Business Journal and many others.
Summers holds an M.A. in Economics from George Mason University and earned his Bachelor of
Arts degree in Economics and Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles.
HOW CALIFORNIA’S PUBLIC PENSION SYSTEM BROKE
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35
Endnotes
1
See statement of Steven A. Kandarian, Executive Director, Pension Benefit Guaranty
Corporation,
Before the United States House Of Representatives, Committee On Ways And Means,
Subcommittee On Select Revenue Measures, April 30, 2003,
http://www.pbgc.gov/media/news-archive/testimony/tm1170.html (accessed March 14, 2010);
Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, “PBGC Takes $2.3 Billion Pension Loss from US
Airways,” February 2, 2005, http://www.pbgc.gov/media/news-archive/newsreleases/2005/pr05-22.html (accessed March 14, 2010); and testimony of Bradley D. Belt,
Executive Director, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation,
before the United States House of Representatives, Committee on Transportation &
Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Aviation, June 22, 2005, http://www.pbgc.gov/media/newsarchive/testimony/tm13159.html (accessed March 14, 2010).
2
David Shepardson, “Pension liabilities weigh on Big 3,” Detroit News, February 6, 2010,
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100206/BIZ/2060315/Pension-liabilities-weigh-on-Big-3
(accessed March 14, 2010).
3
Ibid.
4
Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., 2007 Shareholder Letter, February 2008, p. 20,
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2007ltr.pdf (accessed March 26, 2010).
5
Robert Novy-Marx and Joshua D. Rauh, “The Liabilities and Risks of State-Sponsored
Pension Plans,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 23, No. 4, Fall 2009, pp. 197-199,
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/rauh/research/JEP_Fall2009.pdf (accessed April
14, 2010).
6
Howard Bornstein, Stan Markuze, Cameron Percy, Lisha Wang, and Moritz Zander, “Going
for Broke: Reforming California’s Public Employee Pension Systems,” Stanford Institute for
Economic Policy Research, April 2010, http://www.stanford.edu/group/siepr/cgibin/siepr/?q=/system/files/shared/GoingforBroke_pb.pdf (accessed April 15, 2010).
7
Troy Anderson, “State pension shortfall totals $535 billion,” Los Angeles Daily News, April 5,
2010, http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_14825623 (accessed April 14, 2010).
8
Judy Lin, “Public pensions draw scrutiny amid Calif. crisis,” San Francisco Chronicle, July
31, 2009, http://www.sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/07/31/financial/f103307D96.DTL (accessed March 30, 2010).
9
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employer Costs for Employee
Compensation— December 2009,” March 10, 2010, pp. 8, 10,
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf (accessed March 14, 2010).
36
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Reason Foundation
10
Daniel Weintraub, “Battered public pension funds – Everyone pays,” Sacramento Bee,
May 18, 2003.
11
California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility. A searchable database of the “$100,000
Pension Club” is available on the CFFR website at
http://www.californiapensionreform.com/database.asp (accessed April 15, 2010).
12
John Hill and Dorothy Korber, “Pension jackpot: Many more winning safety-worker
label,” Sacramento Bee, May 9, 2004.
13
Ibid.
14
See California Department of Finance, Schedule 6: Summary of State Population, Employees,
and Expenditures, http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/BudgetSummary/BS_SCH6.pdf (accessed
March 13, 2010), and Chart M-1: Historical Data: Personnel Years,
http://www.dof.ca.gov/budgeting/budget_faqs/documents/CHART-M1.pdf (accessed March
13, 2010).
15
California Department of Finance, Schedule 6: Summary of State Population, Employees, and
Expenditures, http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/BudgetSummary/BS_SCH6.pdf (accessed
March 13, 2010).
16
California Public Employees’ Retirement System, “Facts at a Glance: Health,” March 2010,
p.3, http://www.calpers.ca.gov/eip-docs/about/facts/health.pdf (accessed March 30, 2010).
17
“Origins of pension bloat: 1990 legislation wreaks financial havoc,” Sacramento Bee,
December 28, 2004.
18
“Spiked pensions can’t be defended,” Sacramento Bee, March 24, 2010,
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/03/24/2629109/spiked-pensions-cant-be-defended.html (accessed
March 30, 2010).
19
Patrick McGreevey, “Some state retirees rake in pensions and paychecks,” Los Angeles Times,
October 8, 2009, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-double-dip92009oct09,0,834754.story (accessed March 30, 2010).
20
Ibid.
21
Ibid.
22
Jack Leonard and Catherine Saillant, “County Pensions Examined for Abuse.” Los Angeles
Times, December 14, 2004, http://articles.latimes.com/2004/dec/14/local/me-pension14
(accessed March 30, 2010).
23
Ibid.
24
California Public Employees’ Retirement System, Comprehensive Annual Financial Report,
Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2008, p. 105, https://www.calpers.ca.gov/msspublication/pdf/xGIPCN0RsQoyQ_2008%20CAFR(r3).pdf (accessed March 30, 2010).
25
California Public Employees’ Retirement System, “Facts at a Glance: Investment,” October
2009, p. 2, http://www.calpers.ca.gov/eip-docs/about/facts/investme.pdf (accessed October 11,
2009).
26
California State Teachers’ Retirement System, 2009 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report,
January 22, 2010, p. 79,
HOW CALIFORNIA’S PUBLIC PENSION SYSTEM BROKE
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37
http://www.calstrs.com/help/forms_publications/printed/CurrentCAFR/cafr_2009.pdf
(accessed March 14, 2010).
27
See Janice Revell, “Beware the Pension Monster,” Fortune, December 9, 2002,
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2002/12/09/333483/index.htm
(accessed March 26, 2010); James Flanigan, “State Pension System Needs Overhaul,” Los
Angeles Times, January 23, 2005, http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/23/business/fi-flan23
(accessed March 26, 2010); and David Evans, “Hidden Pension Fiasco May Foment Another
$1 Trillion Bailout,” Bloomberg.com, March 3, 2009,
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=alwTE0Z5.1EA&refer=home
(accessed March 26, 2010). Note that Buffett reduced Berkshire Hathaway’s assumed pension
fund return to 6.5% back in 2001, years before the recent market run-up, bursting of the
housing bubble and onset of severe recession.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=alwTE0Z5.1EA&refer=home
(accessed March 26, 2010).
28
See Gina Chon, “Calpers Confronts Cuts to Return Rate,” The Wall Street Journal, March 1,
2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703316904575092362999067810.html
(subscription required; accessed March 26, 2010), and James Flanigan, “State Pension System
Needs Overhaul,” Los Angeles Times, January 23, 2005,
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/23/business/fi-flan23 (accessed March 26, 2010).
29
Ed Mendel, “CalPERS actuary: pension costs unsustainable,” Calpensions.com, August 10,
2009, http://calpensions.com/2009/08/10/calpers-actuary-pension-costs-unsustainable/
(accessed March 30, 2010).
30
See the Pension Tsunami website, which collects news articles and Web logs about pension
issues, at http://www.PensionTsunami.com
31
George Passantino and Adam B. Summers, The Gathering Pension Storm: How Government
Pension Plans Are Breaking the Bank and Strategies for Reform (Los Angeles: Reason
Foundation, 2005), Policy Study No. 335, June 2005,
http://reason.org/files/fdc15a51e854e26460feefba6c302a9c.pdf
32
See statement of Steven A. Kandarian, Executive Director, Pension Benefit Guaranty
Corporation, Before the United States House Of Representatives, Committee On Ways And
Means, Subcommittee On Select Revenue Measures, April 30, 2003,
http://www.pbgc.gov/media/news-archive/testimony/tm1170.html (accessed March 14, 2010);
Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, “PBGC Takes $2.3 Billion Pension Loss from US
Airways,” February 2, 2005, http://www.pbgc.gov/media/news-archive/newsreleases/2005/pr05-22.html (accessed March 14, 2010); and testimony of Bradley D. Belt,
Executive Director, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, before the United States House of
Representatives, Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Aviation,
June 22, 2005, http://www.pbgc.gov/media/news-archive/testimony/tm13159.html (accessed
March 14, 2010).
33
David Shepardson, “Pension liabilities weigh on Big 3,” Detroit News, February 6, 2010,
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100206/BIZ/2060315/Pension-liabilities-weigh-on-Big-3
(accessed March 14, 2010).
34
Ibid.
38
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Reason Foundation
35
California Department of Finance, Schedule 6: Summary of State Population, Employees, and
Expenditures, http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/BudgetSummary/BS_SCH6.pdf (accessed
March 13, 2010).
36
Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., 2007 Shareholder Letter, February 2008, p. 20,
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/2007ltr.pdf (accessed March 26, 2010).
37
The Pew Charitable Trusts, Pew Center on the States, The Trillion Dollar Gap: Underfunded
State Retirement Systems and the Roads to Reform, February 2010,
http://downloads.pewcenteronthestates.org/The_Trillion_Dollar_Gap_final.pdf (accessed
March 27, 2010).
38
Jonathan R. Laing, “The $2 Trillion Hole,” Barron’s, March 15, 2010,
http://online.barrons.com/article/SB126843815871861303.html#articleTabs_panel_article%3D
1 (accessed March 27, 2010).
39
Andrew G. Biggs, Truth in Accounting: Calculating the market value of unfunded obligations
in state and local government pensions (Tampa, FL: The Free Enterprise Nation, Inc., 2010),
http://www.thefreeenterprisenation.org/FENI/media/Docs-Editorial/FEN%20%20Truth%20in%20Accounting%20by%20Andrew%20Biggs.pdf (accessed March 27, 2010).
40
Robert Novy-Marx and Joshua D. Rauh, “Public Pension Promises: How Big Are They and
What Are They Worth?” December 18, 2009, http://ssrn.com/abstract=1352608 (accessed
March 30, 2010).
41
Robert Novy-Marx and Joshua D. Rauh, “The Liabilities and Risks of State-Sponsored
Pension Plans,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 23, No. 4, Fall 2009, pp. 197-199,
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/rauh/research/JEP_Fall2009.pdf (accessed April
14, 2010).
42
Howard Bornstein, Stan Markuze, Cameron Percy, Lisha Wang, and Moritz Zander, “Going
for Broke: Reforming California’s Public Employee Pension Systems,” Stanford Institute for
Economic Policy Research, April 2010, http://www.stanford.edu/group/siepr/cgibin/siepr/?q=/system/files/shared/GoingforBroke_pb.pdf (accessed April 15, 2010).
43
Troy Anderson, “State pension shortfall totals $535 billion,” Los Angeles Daily News, April 5,
2010, http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_14825623 (accessed April 14, 2010).
44
Judy Lin, “Public pensions draw scrutiny amid Calif. crisis,” San Francisco Chronicle, July
31, 2009, http://www.sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/07/31/financial/f103307D96.DTL (accessed March 30, 2010).
45
Bornstein, et al., “Going for Broke,” p. 4.
46
State of California, Office of the Governor, “Governor Schwarzenegger Issues Statement on
Stanford Pension Report,” April 5, 2010, http://gov.ca.gov/press-release/14745/ (accessed
April 15, 2010).
47
David Crane, “Legislators’ priorities are the ones that deserve questioning,” San Jose Mercury
News, January 20, 2010, http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_14231409?nclick_check=1
(accessed March 30, 2010).
48
California Legislative Analyst’s Office, “2008 Initiative Analysis: The McCauley Public
Employee Pension Reform Act,” LAO letter to Attorney General Jerry Brown re: pension
benefits, January 6, 2009, p. 1, http://www.lao.ca.gov/ballot/2008/080780.pdf (accessed March
29, 2010).
HOW CALIFORNIA’S PUBLIC PENSION SYSTEM BROKE
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39
49
Kent Osband, “Fatted Leviathan,” National Review, February 22, 2010,
http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=OGQ0ZmU0MjhlMjAwNThjM2IxMWVjNzE0MzJi
N2U2Yzk (accessed March 30, 2010).
50
Lin, “Public pensions draw scrutiny amid Calif. crisis.”
51
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) manages retirement benefits
for 1.6 million California public employees, retirees and their families. In addition to managing
benefits for state employees, CalPERS also administers benefits for over 2,500 other public
agency employers. The California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) provides
retirement benefits to 833,000 California teachers in public schools and community colleges.
52
Marc Lifsher, “Almost $100 billion in losses for California’s biggest government pension
funds,” Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2009, http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jul/22/business/ficalpers22 (accessed March 30, 2010).
53
Marc Lifsher, “Teachers pension fund is $43 billion short,” Los Angeles Times, January 29,
2010, http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jan/29/business/la-fi-calstrs29-2010jan29 (accessed
March 14, 2010).
54
Ed Mendel, “CalPERS, CalSTRS funding levels plunge,” Calpensions.com, January 29, 2010,
http://calpensions.com/2010/01/29/calpers-calstrs-funding-levels-plunge/ (accessed March 30,
2010).
55
U.S. Government Accountability Office, “State and Local Government Retiree Benefits:
Current Funded Status of Pension and Health Benefits,” GAO-08-223, January 2008, p. 3,
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08223.pdf (accessed March 27, 2010).
56
Marc Lifsher, “CalPERS, CalSTRS see long-term credit ratings downturn,” Los Angeles
Times, December 11, 2009, http://articles.latimes.com/2009/dec/11/business/la-fi-pensionsratings11-2009dec11 (accessed March 14, 2010).
57
“Fiscal collapse at the next turn?” Vallejo Times-Herald, March 3, 2010.
58
Troy Anderson, “Taking aim at rich pensions,” Los Angeles Daily News, March 7, 2010,
http://www.dailynews.com/news/ci_14527495 (accessed March 29, 2010).
59
Dale Kasler, “Giant California pension funds may lower earnings expectations,” Sacramento
Bee, March 3, 2010, http://www.sacbee.com/2010/03/03/2577982/giant-california-pensionfunds.html (accessed March 26, 2010).
60
Ibid.
61
California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility. A searchable database of the “$100,000
Pension Club” is available on the CFFR website at
http://www.californiapensionreform.com/database.asp (accessed April 15, 2010).
62
Daniel Weintraub, “Battered public pension funds–Everyone pays,” Sacramento Bee, May 18,
2003.
63
“Pension funds slip deep into the abyss,” Sacramento Bee, March 7, 2010,
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/03/07/2586541/pension-funds-slip-deep-into-the.html (accessed
March 27, 2010).
64
“Harrigan’s costly legacy,” Sacramento Bee, December 9, 2004.
40
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Reason Foundation
65
California Legislative Analyst’s Office, Analysis of the 2004-05 Budget Bill, “General
Government,” February 18, 2004, p. F-19,
http://www.lao.ca.gov/analysis_2004/general_govt/gengov_anl04.pdf (accessed March 30,
2010).
66
Ed Mendel, “Arnold: cut retirement benefits for new hires,” Calpensions.com, June 30, 2009,
http://calpensions.com/2009/06/30/arnold-cut-retirement-benefits-for-new-hires/ (accessed
March 30, 2010).
67
Mendel, “CALPERS actuary: pension costs unsustainable.”
68
Ibid.
69
Video footage of Treasurer Bill Lockyer’s comments is available at Adam B. Summers, “CA
Treasurer Says Public Pensions Will ‘Bankrupt’ State,” Reason.org, November 4, 2009,
http://reason.org/blog/show/ca-treasurer-says-public-pensi (accessed March 29, 2010).
70
Willie Brown, “Homeland security chief takes responsibility,” San Francisco Chronicle,
January 3, 2010, http://www.sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/03/BA2V1BBGHH.DTL&type=printable (accessed March 29,
2010).
71
John Hill and Dorothy Korber, “Pension jackpot: Many more winning safety-worker label,”
Sacramento Bee, May 9, 2004.
72
Ibid.
73
“Assembly Labor and Employment Committee Receives California Golden Fleece Award for
Undeserved Pension Hikes,” Pacific Research Institute, August 23, 2004,
http://liberty.pacificresearch.org/press/assembly-labor-and-employment-committee-receivescalifornia-golden-fleece-award-for-undeserved-pension-hikes (accessed March 30, 2010).
74
See California Department of Finance, Schedule 6: Summary of State Population, Employees,
and Expenditures, http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/BudgetSummary/BS_SCH6.pdf (accessed
March 13, 2010), and Chart M-1: Historical Data: Personnel Years,
http://www.dof.ca.gov/budgeting/budget_faqs/documents/CHART-M1.pdf (accessed March
13, 2010).
75
California Department of Finance, Schedule 6: Summary of State Population, Employees, and
Expenditures, http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/BudgetSummary/BS_SCH6.pdf (accessed
March 13, 2010).
76
Jon Ortiz, “California’s state work force grew despite budget woes and cut promises,”
Sacramento Bee, March 16, 2009.
77
See, for example, Tax Foundation, 2010 Facts and Figures: How Does Your State Compare?
March 25, 2010, http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/f&f_booklet_20100325.pdf (accessed
March 26, 2010). For more state rankings and discussion of California’s high-tax, highregulation and poor business climate, see Arthur B. Laffer, Stephen Moore, and Jonathan
Williams, Rich States, Poor State:, ALEC-Laffer State Economic Competitiveness Index, 3rd
Ed. (Washington, D.C.: American Legislative Exchange Council, 2009),
http://www.alec.org/am/pdf/tax/10rsps/rsps10-full.pdf (accessed April 14, 2010); William P.
Ruger and Jason Sorens, Freedom in the 50 States: An Index of Personal and Economic
Freedom (Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center, 2009),
http://mercatus.org/sites/default/files/publication/Freedom_in_the_50_States.pdf (accessed
HOW CALIFORNIA’S PUBLIC PENSION SYSTEM BROKE
|
41
March 26, 2010); and “CEOs Select Best, Worst States for Job Growth and Business,” Chief
Executive, January/February 2009,
http://www.chiefexecutive.net/ME2/Audiences/dirmod.asp?sid=&nm=&type=Publishing&mo
d=Publications%3A%3AArticle&mid=8F3A7027421841978F18BE895F87F791&tier=4&id=
D8BB1C4F12AE46EF9B7647E09E3253A6&AudID=F242408EE36A4B18AABCEB128996
0A07 (accessed March 26, 2010).
78
For more information on California pensions and other post-employment benefits (OPEB) and
potential approaches to meeting pension and OPEB obligations, see the final report of the
California Public Employee Post-Employment Benefits Commission, Funding Pensions &
Retiree Health Care for Public Employees, January 2008,
http://www.pebc.ca.gov/images/files/final/080107_PEBCReport2007.pdf (accessed March 30,
2010).
79
California State Controller’s Office, “Chiang Releases Long-Term Costs for State Retiree
Health Benefits,” February 9, 2010,
http://www.sco.ca.gov/eo_pressrel_OPEB_February_2010.html (accessed March 30, 2010).
80
Jon Ortiz, “Report: State spending too much for retiree health care,” Sacramento Bee, February
25, 2009.
81
PricewaterhouseCoopers, Health Research Institute, Behind the numbers: Medical cost trends
for 2010, June 2009, p. 6, http://pwchealth.com/cgilocal/hregister.cgi?link=reg/Behind_the_numbers_Medical_cost_trends_for_2010.pdf
(registration required—accessed March 30, 2010).
82
California Public Employees’ Retirement System, “Facts at a Glance: Health,” March 2010,
p.3, http://www.calpers.ca.gov/eip-docs/about/facts/health.pdf (accessed March 30, 2010).
83
The Pew Charitable Trusts, Pew Center on the States, The Trillion Dollar Gap: Underfunded
State Retirement Systems and the Roads to Reform, p. 11.
84
California Public Employees’ Retirement System, Comprehensive Annual Financial Report,
Fiscal Year Ended June 30, 2008, p. 105, https://www.calpers.ca.gov/msspublication/pdf/xGIPCN0RsQoyQ_2008%20CAFR(r3).pdf (accessed March 30, 2010).
85
California Public Employees’ Retirement System, “Facts at a Glance: Investment,” October
2009, p. 2, http://www.calpers.ca.gov/eip-docs/about/facts/investme.pdf (accessed October 11,
2009).
86
California State Teachers’ Retirement System, 2009 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report,
January 22, 2010, p. 79,
http://www.calstrs.com/help/forms_publications/printed/CurrentCAFR/cafr_2009.pdf
(accessed March 14, 2010).
87
See Janice Revell, “Beware the Pension Monster,” Fortune, December 9, 2002,
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2002/12/09/333483/index.htm
(accessed March 26, 2010); James Flanigan, “State Pension System Needs Overhaul,” Los
Angeles Times, January 23, 2005, http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/23/business/fi-flan23
(accessed March 26, 2010); and David Evans, “Hidden Pension Fiasco May Foment Another
$1 Trillion Bailout,” Bloomberg.com, March 3, 2009,
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=alwTE0Z5.1EA&refer=home
(accessed March 26, 2010). Note that Buffett reduced Berkshire Hathaway’s assumed pension
fund return to 6.5% back in 2001, years before the recent market run-up, bursting of the
housing bubble and onset of severe recession.
42
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Reason Foundation
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=alwTE0Z5.1EA&refer=home
(accessed March 26, 2010).
88
See Gina Chon, “Calpers Confronts Cuts to Return Rate,” The Wall Street Journal, March 1,
2010, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748703316904575092362999067810.html
(subscription required; accessed March 26, 2010), and James Flanigan, “State Pension System
Needs Overhaul,” Los Angeles Times, January 23, 2005,
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/23/business/fi-flan23 (accessed March 26, 2010).
89
Towers Watson (formerly Watson Wyatt Worldwide), “Watson Wyatt Pension 100 – 2008
Disclosures of Funding, Discount Rates, Asset Allocations and Contributions,” April 2009,
http://www.watsonwyatt.com/us/pubs/insider/showarticle.asp?ArticleID=20764 (accessed
March 29, 2010).
90
See, for example, Robert Novy-Marx and Joshua D. Rauh, “The Liabilities and Risks of StateSponsored Pension Plans,” pp. 194-197; Andrew G. Biggs, Truth in Accounting: Calculating
the market value of unfunded obligations in state and local government pensions, pp. 6, 12-14;
and Howard Bornstein, Stan Markuze, Cameron Percy, Lisha Wang and Moritz Zander,
“Going for Broke: Reforming California’s Public Employee Pension Systems,” p. 2.
91
Dale Kasler, “Giant California pension funds may lower earnings expectations.”
92
Ibid.
93
The Pew Charitable Trusts, Pew Center on the States, The Trillion Dollar Gap: Underfunded
State Retirement Systems and the Roads to Reform, p. 5.
94
Jason Sisney (formerly Jason Dickerson), “Public Employee Pension and Retiree Health Costs
in California,” California Legislative Analyst’s Office, Presentation to the Council of State
Governments, La Quinta, California, November 13, 2009, p. 15,
http://www.lao.ca.gov/handouts/state_admin/2009/Public_Employee_Pension_11_13_09.pdf
(accessed March 29, 2010).
95
Dan Walters, “CalPERS in deep financial trouble,” Orange County Register, November 13,
2009, http://www.ocregister.com/articles/calpers-219353-pension-public.html (accessed March
29, 2010).
96
“Accounting tricks can’t fix damage,” Modesto Bee, June 26, 2009,
http://www.modbee.com/2009/06/25/759357/accounting-tricks-cant-fix-damage.html
(accessed March 29, 2010).
97
David Lamoureux and Ron Seeling, California Public Employees’ Retirement System, Memo
to Members of the Board of Administration, “Impact of Economic Environment on Employers
Rates and Possible Smoothing Modifications (First Reading),” May 13, 2009, p. 4,
http://www.calpers.ca.gov/eip-docs/about/board-cal-agenda/agendas/full/200905/item14.pdf
(accessed March 29, 2010).
98
Yamil Berard, “Underfunded pension may put cities in bind,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram,
February 13, 2005.
99
David Evans, “Hidden Pension Fiasco May Foment Another $1 Trillion Bailout,”
Bloomberg.com, March 3, 2009,
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=alwTE0Z5.1EA&refer=home
(accessed March 26, 2010).
HOW CALIFORNIA’S PUBLIC PENSION SYSTEM BROKE
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100
Centers for Disease Control, “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report,” Vol. 48, No. 12, April
2, 1999, p. 241, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/PDF/wk/mm4812.pdf (accessed March 30, 2010).
101
Rudolf G. Penner, Pamela Perun, and C. Eugene Steuerle, “Legal and Institutional
Impediments to Partial Retirement and Part-Time Work by Older Workers,” The Urban
Institute, November 20, 2002, p. 7. Available online at
http://www.urban.org/UploadedPDF/410587_SloanFinal.pdf (accessed March 30, 2010).
102
John Hill and Dorothy Korber, “How law fattens state pensions,” Sacramento Bee, December
19, 2004.
103
“Origins of pension bloat: 1990 legislation wreaks financial havoc,” Sacramento Bee,
December 28, 2004.
104
“Spiked pensions can’t be defended,” Sacramento Bee, March 24, 2010,
http://www.sacbee.com/2010/03/24/2629109/spiked-pensions-cant-be-defended.html (accessed
March 30, 2010).
105
Patrick McGreevey, “Some state retirees rake in pensions and paychecks,” Los Angeles Times,
October 8, 2009, http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-double-dip92009oct09,0,834754.story (accessed March 30, 2010).
106
Ibid.
107
Ibid.
108
“‘Chief’s disease’ inflates highway patrol pensions,” Sacramento Bee, September 10, 2004.
109
Troy Anderson, “Padding for pensions? Workers’ comp patterns for retiring county firefighters
raise a red flag,” Los Angeles Daily News, December 11, 2004. See also Jack Leonard and
Catherine Saillant, “County Pensions Examined for Abuse,” Los Angeles Times, December 14,
2004, http://articles.latimes.com/2004/dec/14/local/me-pension14 (accessed March 30, 2010).
110
Jack Leonard and Catherine Saillant, “County Pensions Examined for Abuse,” Los Angeles
Times, December 14, 2004, http://articles.latimes.com/2004/dec/14/local/me-pension14
(accessed March 30, 2010).
111
Ibid.
112
California Legislative Analyst’s Office, Analysis of the 2004-05 Budget Bill, “General
Government,” p. F-16.
113
Lin, “Public pensions draw scrutiny amid Calif. crisis.”
114
Ibid.
115
Laing, “The $2 Trillion Hole.”
116
Although 401(k)s were created in the Revenue Act of 1978, they “effectively were not adopted
until the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued clarifying rules on their use in 1981.” See Gary
V. Engelhardt, “Have 401(k)s Raised Household Saving? Evidence from the Health and
Retirement Study,” Syracuse University, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs,
Center for Policy Research, Aging Studies Program Paper No. 24, June 2001, p. 1, http://wwwcpr.maxwell.syr.edu/agpapser/pdf/age24.pdf (accessed March 30, 2010).
117
David Rajnes, “An Evolving Pension System: Trends in Defined Benefit and Defined
Contribution Plans,” Employee Benefit Research Institute, EBRI Issue Brief Number 249,
44
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Reason Foundation
September 2002, p. 6, http://www.ebri.org/pdf/briefspdf/0902ib.pdf (accessed March 30,
2010).
118
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Compensation Survey:
Employee Benefits in the United States, March 2009, Bulletin 2731, September 2009. See
Table 2. Retirement benefits: access, participation and take-up rates, state and local
government workers, National Compensation Survey, March 2009,
http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2009/ownership/govt/table02a.pdf (accessed March 30,
2010).
119
Ibid., See Table 2. Retirement benefits: access, participation, and take-up rates, private
industry workers, National Compensation Survey, March 2009,
http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2009/ownership/private/table02a.pdf (accessed March 30,
2010).
120
Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation website, “Who We Are,”
http://www.pbgc.gov/about/about.html (accessed March 13, 2010).
121
Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, Pension Insurance Data Book 2008, p. 40,
http://www.pbgc.gov/docs/2008databook.pdf (accessed March 14, 2010).
122
Ibid. and Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, 2009 Annual Management Report,
November 13, 2009, p. 6, http://www.pbgc.gov/docs/2009amr.pdf (accessed March 30, 2010).
123
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employer Costs for Employee
Compensation— December 2009,” March 10, 2010, pp. 8, 10,
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/ecec.pdf (accessed March 14, 2010).
124
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, “Employee Tenure in 2008,” September 26, 2008,
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/tenure.pdf (accessed March 30, 2010).
125
Peter J. Ferrara, “Pension Liberation for Florida,” Americans for Tax Reform Policy Brief,
April 18, 2000, http://www.atr.org/pension-liberation-florida-a1054 (accessed March 30,
2010).
126
Ibid.
127
Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund (TIAACREF), Pension Primer: The Hows and Whys of Replacing a Defined Benefit Plan, “Reasons
for Choosing a Defined Contribution Plan,” undated, https://www3.tiaacref.org/adminbookstore/Detail.do?id=330 (account required).
128
See, for instance, Tongxuan (Stella) Yang, Understanding the Defined Benefit versus Defined
Contribution Choice, p. 7, Pension Research Council Working Paper, The Wharton School,
University of Pennsylvania, http://rider.wharton.upenn.edu/~prc/PRC/WP/WP2005-4.pdf
(accessed March 30, 2010).
129
Cathy Bussewitz, “Report: Calif. pension fund under federal criminal investigation for
investment decisions,” Los Angeles Times, March 26, 2010,
http://www.latimes.com/business/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-us-calif-pensionfund,0,2272438.story (accessed March 30, 2010).
130
Mark Baldassare, Dean Bonner, Sonja Petek and Nicole Willcoxon, “PPIC Statewide Survey:
Californians and Their Government,” Public Policy Institute of California, January 2010, p. 22,
http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/survey/S_110MBS.pdf (accessed March 29, 2010).
131
Anderson, “Taking aim at rich pensions.”
HOW CALIFORNIA’S PUBLIC PENSION SYSTEM BROKE
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132
See for example, George Passantino and Adam B. Summers, The Gathering Pension Storm:
How Government Pension Plans Are Breaking the Bank and Strategies for Reform, pp. 23-24,
and Alicia H. Munnell, Alex Golub-Sass, Kelly Haverstick, Mauricio Soto and Gregory Wiles,
“Why Have Some States Introduced Defined Contribution Plans?” Center for Retirement
Research at Boston College, State and Local Pension Plans No. 3, January 2008, pp. 2, 10-11,
http://crr.bc.edu/images/stories/Briefs/slp_3b.pdf?phpMyAdmin=43ac483c4de9t51d9eb41
(accessed March 30, 2010).
133
James Mayer, “Employers linked to PERS will pay more,” The Oregonian, April 16, 2005.
134
K.C. Swanson, “Nebraska Sees Red Over Its 401(k) Plans,” TheStreet.com, May 7, 2002,
http://www.thestreet.com/funds/belowradar/10021041.html (accessed March 30, 2010).
135
For more detail about Nebraska’s pension plans, see the Nebraska Public Employees
Retirement Systems website, https://npers.ne.gov/ (accessed March 30, 2010).
136
Dale Kasler, “Why one state ditched public pension switch,” Sacramento Bee, January 30,
2005.
137
Kevin Howe, “Voters approve leaving pension plan,” Monterey County Herald, November 6,
2008.
138
Ventura County Grand Jury 2008-2009, Ventura County Pension: “An Uncontrollable Cost,”
June 10, 2009, p. 6,
http://portal.countyofventura.org/portal/page/portal/Grand_Jury/Reports/TAB4579372/10Vent
uraCountyPensionAnUncontrollableCost.pdf (accessed March 30, 2010).
139
Christy Weir, “Ventura tightens belt,” Ventura County Star, August 23, 2009,
http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2009/aug/23/ventura-tightens-belt/?partner=RSS
(accessed March 30, 2010).
140
Roderick B. Crane, Michael Heller, and Paul Yakoboski, Defined Contribution Plans in the
Public Sector: A Best Practice Benchmark Analysis, TIAA-CREF Institute, April 2008,
http://www.tiaacrefinstitute.org/pdf/research/dvds_books/DCPlansinPublicSectorCraneHellerandYako.pdf
(accessed March 30, 2010).
141
See, for example, Kern v. City of Long Beach (1947) 29 Cal.2d 848, 853, 855; Dickey v.
Retirement Board (1976) 16 Cal.3d 745, 749; and Miller v. State of California (1977) 18
Cal.3d 808, 815-17. For a discussion of these cases, see Richard Whitmore and Cepideh
Roufougar, “Further Storm Warnings in the Territory of Retiree Health Care Benefits,” CPER
Journal, No. 185, August 2007, p. 7,
http://www.calbar.ca.gov/calbar/pdfs/sections/laborlaw/cper_2008_retiree-healthbenefits_whitmore.pdf (accessed March 26, 2010). For a discussion on how state and local
public employee pension benefits might be reduced or altered, based on case law, see Chang,
Ruthenberg & Long PC, “Can California Local Government Employers Reduce Benefits Plan
Costs? There May Be More Latitude Than You Think,” 2009,
http://www.seethebenefits.com/showarticle.aspx?Show=4462 (accessed March 26, 2010).
142
Norberto Santana, Jr., “Voters overwhelmingly support effort to block pension spikes,”
Orange County Register, November 5, 2009, http://www.ocregister.com/articles/countysupervisors-public-2218151-measure-voters (accessed March 30, 2010).
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